It would be really neat if it actually worked this way. It doesn't. The civil courts are less and less about who's in the right and more and more about who can afford to play the game. The math works in the RIAA's favor here. If I'm going to have to lawyer up to the tune of ten grand I don't have and waste a year of my hairline to defend my name, or pay two grand that I can spread out on credit cards, how is that so different from "pay us 30% out of the register, or maybe have an electrical fire?"

As for open and shut cases, do you really trust an organization that's suing a list of IP addresses because they can't actually go to the trouble of finding actual defendants? Given that a significant percentage of the last batch of addresses aren't even in the United States (the jurisdiction of the court in which the suits were filed), do we trust their investigative prowess so much as to call the cases open and shut? If you're truly concerned about harm to your business, you do the research. If you can't even be bothered to

for ip in `cat ip-addresses.txt`; do whois -h whois.arin.net $ip | grep 'Country:' | grep -i us | wc ; done

before you trot your ass down to the courtroom, you look a little less than honest in your plaintive wails of "stop the evil file sharers from starving our artists!"

If you happen to know the plaintiff in the RICO countersuit, and you know she is guilty, then my apologies for my tone. Otherwise, I'll keep an open mind as to who the real extortionist is.