Recording Industry Association Of America

If they don't quit illegally downloading music, some USC students may end up having to fight on ... in court. The record industry's main trade group said Wednesday that it was mailing letters to 20 of the school's students whom it had identified as bootleggers. The letters warn that an expensive lesson awaits if the students don't stop the practice. Settle, the dispatches say, or be sued. The mailings are part of a stepped-up legal fight by the Recording Industry Assn.

The music industry Wednesday expanded its crackdown on illegal on-campus file-sharing to Columbia University, Dartmouth College and 21 other schools, demanding students pay as much as $5,000 to head off lawsuits. The Recording Industry Assn. of America mailed 405 "pre-litigation letters" in the second wave of its latest campus anti-piracy campaign, the organization said. Boston University received 50, the most of any school in this round of mailings.

The music and movie industries are lobbying state legislators for permission to deceive when pursuing suspected pirates. The California Senate is considering a bill that would strengthen state privacy laws by banning the use of false statements and other misleading practices to get personal information. The tactic, known as pretexting, created a firestorm of criticism when detectives hired by Hewlett-Packard Co. used it last year to obtain phone records of board members, journalists and critics.

With CD sales tumbling, record companies and musicians are looking at a new potential pot of money: royalties from broadcast radio stations. For years, stations have paid royalties to composers and publishers when they played their songs. But they enjoy a federal exemption when paying the performers and record labels because, they argue, the airplay sells music. Now, the Recording Industry Assn.

minneapolis -- A group of record companies says Jammie Thomas has illegally shared music files including Enya and Swedish death metal online. Today, she will become the first of 26,000 people who have been sued by the recording industry to take the case to trial. The Brainerd, Minn., resident is accused of illegally sharing 1,702 songs for free on a file-sharing network.

The recording industry on Thursday won the largest judgment so far against consumers who illegally download music over the Internet when a federal jury ordered a 30-year-old Minnesota woman to pay $222,000 for copyright infringement. The victory could embolden the industry in its four-year legal campaign against piracy at a time when illegal sharing of music online is exploding and dramatically reducing music sales. The decision by the jury in a federal district court in Duluth, Minn.

Forget about feeling sorry for Britney; Jammie Thomas is pop culture's most suitable empathy sponge today. After Thursday's ruling in the first of what could be many online music-pirating cases to reach a jury, the 30-year-old Native American single mom from Brainerd, Minn. (median household income: $26,901) owes the Recording Industry Assn. of America (RIAA) $222,000 for participating in illegal file-sharing over the peer-to-peer application Kazaa. It's hard to imagine a more unlikely saboteur.

Garth Brooks officially is the bestselling solo act in U.S. music history. Again. Brooks collected his latest hunka-hunka precious metal Monday from the Recording Industry Assn. of America, certifying total album sales of 123 million copies, allowing him to surpass Elvis Presley to reclaim the No. 2 slot. The Beatles have long been No. 1 on the RIAA's ranking of U.S. album sales, currently showing sales of 170 million and counting, but the No. 2 position has shifted over time.

A coalition of major recording companies Friday sued the operators of LimeWire for alleged copyright infringement, claiming that the firm encourages users of the popular online file-sharing software to trade music without permission, an industry organization said.

The major Hollywood studios and record companies have a new lesson for college students: The faster you download movies and music, the sooner you may end up in a courtroom. Leaders of the Recording Industry Assn. of America and the Motion Picture Assn. of America said Tuesday that they expected to file hundreds of lawsuits today against students across the country who use a super-fast version of the Internet that connects more than 300 universities and other institutions.