Copyright laws exist in order to protect the artists, musicians, and writers from whom "file sharers" are stealing. Having to pay the RIAA is NOT extortion; it's a punishment that fits the crime.

Mr. Goldgof, why exactly is the university supposed to be responsible for warning you that you're doing something illegal? Surely you knew already, and are now simply looking for excuses?

As for "Former Victim", this claim is tenuous at best:
"So to say they can 100% prove it was you is absolute garbage."
There are very many times where it is quite unambiguous who is using an IP address. If you register at the beginning of the year, and don't go abroad etc., it is quite clear that your IP is yours until the end of the academic year.

"Stanford CANNOT in fact link you to an IP address because there ARE overlap periods between IP transfers ... So to say they can 100% prove it was you is absolute garbage."
Any RCC can tell you this is incorrect. Every single time your computer accesses the Stanford network, your IP address, MAC address, physical location, time frame, ports opened, and bandwidth used are tracked and logged. This information will be provided to the RIAA in the event of a subpeona.

"Stanford CANNOT in fact link you to an IP address because there ARE overlap periods between IP transfers ... So to say they can 100% prove it was you is absolute garbage."
Any RCC can tell you this is incorrect. Every single time your computer accesses the Stanford network, your IP address, MAC address, physical location, time frame, ports opened, and bandwidth used are tracked and logged. This information will be provided to the RIAA in the event of a subpeona.

RIAA is a biatch!

MAC addresses can be faked. There is no way for the RIAA to concretely prove that a Stanford student has downloaded something illegally due to the way Stanford's (and likely many other school's) network works.
1) Go to a dorm with wireless access.
2) Use Wireshark to look at the network traffic.
3) Pick a packet from Wireshark and find the MAC address.
4) Configure your network card to use that MAC address (varies by operating system).
5) Download all the Gossip Girl episodes you want.
Maybe the Daily should write an article about the possibility of defending against the RIAA (and MPAA).

I'd like to lend support to the idea that people can, in fact, be wrongfully accused by the RIAA / Stanford in these kinds of cases.
I know from personal experience; I was sent a warning last fall (not the pre-litigation thing, luckily - just a warning) for sharing a single file, which I am certain I had never possessed, using a file sharing software I didn't have (and never had). They had caught "my" IP address, they claimed, on a wireless network in one of the libraries. It was clearly, somehow, a case of misidentification of the actual offender. (You know there is something wrong when you are told you shared a file by a band you have never heard of... and when your machine is almost brand new, and you have pretty damn good knowledge of what software is actually running on it.) Incidentally, I was told by an RCC that mishaps like this are more likely when wireless networks are the ones being combed, as IP addresses are so frequently assigned and reassigned on them.
Reading the Daily's article rekindled a bit of the anger I felt back when this incident occurred. And my experience, I think, makes the RIAA's decision to demand money in this way even more dubious. Suppose I had happened to receive, not a warning, but one of these pre-litigation things, for the same supposed "offense"? Like the real offenders, I probably would have had to pay whatever they demanded to avoid going to court.
It would be interesting know whether the fifteen people facing this more serious charge were known by the RIAA to be "ideal" cases of offenders; that is, whether the RIAA had some good reason to think that these particular IPs were sharing things on many different occasions, sharing very many files, doing it from a wired connection, etc. This would go some distance toward making their action more defensible.

For all those who are claiming that what the RIAA is doing constitutes extortion, would you please go learn what the legal definition of that word is? They are not using violence, fear, or anything of the sort.
You can certainly make the claim that the high costs of defending oneself are unfair and unnecessarily burdensome on your average defendant in these cases, but you are not being forced to pay them the settlement. In the eyes of the law, they're giving you a hell of a deal.

Let's consider ballpark cost/benefit:
let's say that a person is a reasonably prolific downloader:
let's say they download 20 movies/year, at cost of $12
$12 * 20 = $240
they download 50 TV shows (that's only 2 seasons of 24) at ~$2 for itunes purchase
$2 * 50 = $100
they download 10 albums per year, at $10 per album
$10 * 10 = $100
so that's $440 per year, times 4 year (not like people stop when they leave college)
so that's $1760 of content stolen just during 4 years of school.
and I have to say that I know many people who have 100 gigabytes of pirated material...
when you get angry at the level of these kinds of fines, try taking a look at how much money you are "saving" with pirating.

"They are not using violence, fear, or anything of the sort."
-disagree. They exactly use "Fear" to be sued for $100k+.
-what if they put files themselves to share and then send 3k "racketeering" mails to victims? RIAA it self could be a very-criminal organization. $3kX20000=$60M it should be enough for GA to start riaa case investigation, if artists get zero $.