Free Culture..with consequences

Overall, I found the first 60 pages of Lessig's "Free Culture" particularly enjoyable. I think part of this has to do with the fact that I am a Communication Arts major and I've been studying a lot of this in my other classes. In fact, I think we've actually read excerpts from Lessig in the past. For this reason, reading about some of the history behind radio and internet formation, for example, simply reiterated some of the things that I have been learning about for classes in my major. And since they are for my major, I guess that this explains why I found the related reading so pleasant. One thing that I found particularly interesting and disturbing was the story about the college student, Jesse Jordan (starting on page 48). Although we've been discussing lawsuits by the RIAA involving Napster, youtube, and the two UW students, I found this one to be unique and reading it struck a nerve with me. When we read about the UW students who are facing the lawsuit for illegal music downloading, I was upset because I know this means they are going to end up losing a lot of money (and sleep) over something that many, many people do simply because the RIAA is chosing to make an example out of these students. In Jesse's case, they made him an offer: pay them every penny he has to his name in a settlement agreement or go to court and risk paying upwards of $250,000. I know that the industry is trying to do what they can to stop people from downloading illegally but I just don't think that this is the way. What if they imposed smaller fines on more people for illegal downloading? Say, if they catch you you owe 50 bucks or something? Then, they could impose the fine on more people, teaching them a lesson and deterring them from downloading illegally while not destroying the lives of a few unfortunate few who get caught. I'm not sure if this is a plausible solution to the way the RIAA is handeling the issue, but I am convinced that there must be some other way from what they are doing now.