If you illegally download music, you can finally stop worrying that someone will knock on your door and serve you legal papers. But file sharing is still illegal, and you might still run into problems if you become a target of the music industry.

Over the past five years, the Recording Industry Association of America has sued tens of thousands of people for illegally sharing copyrighted music on services like Napster or BitTorrent. Now it's decided to stop that onslaught in favor of a new strategy. If it observes your network address publishing music illegally, it'll contact your internet service provider which will in turn send you written warnings and maybe eventually disconnect your internet access.

Enforcing the law on this issue has been an uphill battle. The intent behind the direct lawsuits was to deter people from doing it, but that clearly didn't work; roughly the same percentage of internet users (just shy of 20%) illegally download music now as in 2003. The campaign backfired with a public relations catastrophe caused by national news stories about the group suing single mothers, children, and other sympathetic folks who couldn't possibly pay the settlements demanded.

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