What the RIAA have done for the world

The RIAA's heavy-handed legal activities - sending letters demanding large sums of cash under the threat of being taken to court, and having to pay much more - has been pulling in a nice pile of cash for the record labels. It almost looks so easy, it could be a scam.

Indeed, it is a scam - but at least the RIAA do have some sort of moral point they're trying to make, however wrong it may be, and however nastily they're going about it.

In their wake, however, there are now scammers using the same method purely to make some ill-gotten gains. P2P users get a legal-looking letter claiming they've downloaded an illegal copy of some game, an offer to settle out-of-court and a load of bumpf which seems to suggest they might have unwittingly done something wrong. People pay up.

After all, people who've never downloaded music pay up to the RIAA as it's the line of least resistance.

Well done, RIAA: You've created a whole new type of crime.