A BLIZZARD of subpoenas from the recording industry seeking the identities of people suspected of illegally swopping music is provoking fear, remorse, anger - and a fightback - as the targets of the anti-piracy dragnet learn that they may soon be sued for damages.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has obtained close to 1,000 such subpoenas over the last four weeks to more than a dozen Internet service providers, including Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner Cable, and several universities, including Boston College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, demanding the names of file swoppers.

Most Internet providers are notifying the targeted subscribers by mail that they are legally required to turn over their contact information.

But at least one is fighting back. Citing the privacy and due-process rights of its subscribers, Verizon Communications has appealed a federal court decision that compels Internet service providers to turn over subscriber information without first requiring copyright holders to file a lawsuit.

The company said at least one of the subscribers it notified last week had hired a lawyer and was planning to challenge the recording industry's subpoena.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston College have declined to comply with subpoenas they received, citing procedural concerns and their responsibility to protect student privacy under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

Among those facing legal action are several college students, the parents of a 14-year-old boy in the south-west, a 41-year-old Colorado health-care worker, and a New York woman who works in the fashion industry.

'They could have used some other way to inform people than scaring them,' said a mother who received a copy of the subpoena last week, listing several songs that her 14-year-old son had made available for others to copy from his computer. 'If someone had sent me a letter saying 'This is wrong,' you can bet your sweet potatoes that would have got my attention. This just seems so drastic.'

The ominous letters and a list of screen names culled from court filings that is circulating on the Web underscore the unusually personal nature of the industry's latest effort to stamp out online piracy, which it blames for a 25 per cent drop in sales of CDs since 1999.

Under copyright law, the group can be awarded damages of between US$750 (S$1,317) and US$150,000 for each copyrighted song that was distributed without authorisation.

Some of those targeted expressed shock that they were singled out for an activity that tens of millions of Americans are believed to engage in.

Others said they were unaware they were doing anything wrong. Most of those interviewed refused to be identified by name, citing privacy concerns and the impending legal action against them.

The mother of the 14-year-old boy said she had assumed that her son's file-swopping was all right, because she knew that Napster, the company that drove the original wave of online music piracy, had been shut down after the record companies sued.

Any other company whose software is used by so many of her son's friends, she reasoned, must have done something different to be allowed to continue operating.

After receiving a copy of the subpoena in the mail, the mother said she did some research and learnt that though the software itself might be legal, the way her son was using it was almost certainly not.

The 150 songs her son had on his computer have been deleted, and his computer privileges have been cancelled for the rest of the summer.

'We've had extensive discussions about why it was wrong, and how it's kind of like plagiarism, taking someone else's words or someone else's music and not giving them credit for it,' she said.

She added that her older daughter worried that her parents would not be able to pay for college next year.

The notion of paying up to US$150,000 for each of the eight songs that the recording industry listed on the subpoena - not to mention lawyer fees of US$200 an hour should the family decide to fight a lawsuit - still boggles her mind. 'Hopefully when they find out he's just a kid, they'll drop it,' she said.

But not necessarily. Frustrated with the failure of warnings and educational campaigns to stem the flood of online music trading, the major music companies said on June 25 that they intended to sue hundreds of individuals as a form of deterrence.

'I guess people didn't take it seriously, but we really are very serious about this,' said Mr Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA.

'We want the message to get across to parents that what their kids are doing is illegal. We are going to file lawsuits.'

Some lawyers who were contacted by people who received notices from their Internet providers say the cases raise many questions because of the way the software in question works.

Some versions of Kazaa automatically designate certain computer folders as 'shared,' so users may not have realised that their personal music files, copied from legally bought CDs, were available to others.

Mr Daniel Ballard, a lawyer with McDonough, Holland & Allen in California, said he was representing a New York woman who believed she had prevented her files from being accessible to the Kazaa network. He said hackers might have rearranged the files on his client's hard drive without her knowledge.

Some say they were unaware that they were doing anything illegal.

But a Colorado man, 41, said he knew what he was doing was illegal; he had just not seriously considered the consequences.

'I used the program,' said the man, who used Kazaa to find songs that included the words 'happy birthday' to play for his young daughter on her birthday, among other times.

'It's cute, but look what happened,' he said. 'It's an expensive birthday, that's the reality.' -- NYT