The Recording Industry Association of America [RIAA] decided to up the stakes in going after college students who are sharing music and video files on the Internet. In the last eight months, the Association has sent out seven waves of letters to hundreds of colleges and universities across the country. The letters threaten students with cases demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars unless the students settle immediately on the site p2plawsuits.com for a flat sum of $3,000.

Just a few years ago all you had to worry about was fifty thousand dollars of tuition to pay off; today, some students may be liable for hundreds of thousands in damages from playing on the computer when they should have been studying, especially copywrite infringement.