Private: Music Industry Rep Tells MIT Downloader "Drop Out"

MIT sophomore Cassi Hunt admits to being a music "pirate." But when the RIAA caught up to her (by getting her name from MIT itself) and accused her of illegally downloading 272 songs, she was suprised by the price tag: $3,750 to settle the suit, or the much higher costs of going to trial. Deep in student debt and feeling the RIAA lacked substantive evidence, Hunt tried to negotiate, and was told "in the past the RIAA has encouraged students to either drop out of college or attend community college so they can get a job and pay off their debt."
Hunt has been receiving quite a bit of coverage for her case, a fact she thinks is based on her unique willingness to document her story. She argues

"It isn't that I'm angry that I was 'caught' or that I think people should be able to get away with copyright infringement. The issue here is that the law in place to deal with music piracy was put in place by RIAA lobbyists in order to make it as easy as possible for the RIAA to attack p2p users. The settlement amounts make a fair trial impossible -- even if I were to win in court, I'd be paying at least $3750 in legal fees anyway. And the target group for these suits are people who don't have the assets or the experience to fight these cases."