On Tuesday, the Recording Industry Association of America filed 531 more lawsuits against illegal file sharers, raising the total number of people sued this year to over 1,000.
File-sharing residents of Trenton, N.J.; Orlando, Fla.; Atlanta and Philadelphia can expect to be subpoenaed relatively soon under the new "John Doe" method.
As of now, the sued individuals are still anonymous, known to the RIAA only by their Internet protocol addresses, which are unique to every computer. The RIAA has named 203 Comcast customers who may or may not live in the Philadelphia region.
There is no way yet to determine whether any Penn students have been affected by Tuesday's wave of lawsuits.
If a judge approves the subpoenas, the Internet service providers will be forced to hand over names, phone numbers and other personal information that corresponds with the IP numbers so that the RIAA can take legal action and sue individuals.
Unlike in past rounds of lawsuits, the individuals will receive no letter of warning from the RIAA.
Those sued still can settle with the RIAA, however. This year, approximately 380 people have done so.
"The average people pay is around $3,000," said Jonathan Lamy, a spokesman for the organization.
Lamy added that the RIAA "takes into account a variety of things, including the number of songs that have been downloaded."
Right now, Lamy said, only those who actively distribute and share music files -- as opposed to simply downloading them -- are being targeted. This is expected to change in the future.
"Under the law, it is equally illegal to download even one song without copyrighted permission. People should not think they are above the law if they are simply downloading," Lamy said.
Under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the RIAA was able to subpoena Internet service providers and obtain the names of those users that the organization suspected of downloading music illegally.
From September to December, the RIAA used this method as a means of issuing warning letters to file sharers before any legal action was taken.
Since a December court battle between the RIAA and Verizon, Inc. -- a popular ISP -- the organization has had to resort to suing "John Does" using only their IP addresses.
While Penn has received several notices to expect subpoenas, none have been issued thus far.
