After the University of Wisconsin-Madison declined to forward settlement letters to students alleged to have shared files in an infringing manner, the RIAA took their standard next step of getting a subpoena issued to the university/ISP, asking for the names associated with the IP addresses in question at the time of the alleged infringement.
Next we can expect the standard back-and-forth about whether IP addresses can be connected to actual people with any degree of certainty. If recent events are any indication, the RIAA could hit a fairly serious stumbling block there, which explains why they are so desperate to get universities to forward the settlement letters in the first place: to circumvent standard legal procedures which get more expensive every day -- so much so that the organization refuses to admit how much it spends on lawyers.
(via slashdot)
