Going after individual end-users is largely ineffective. End-users are not so worried about this, so education (scaring other people into not downloading copyrighted media, by making examples out of others) through litigation is not effective. We've seen that with the RIAA and MPAA. Also, it ends up costing more in legal fees, etc than is recovered (monetarily or "educationally").
The way to go is bottleneck it and cut it at the source... the publishers that are stealing it and distributing it.
Quote:
Education by Lawsuit: Lesson Learned and Ignored
The RIAA has frequently justified the lawsuit campaign as the most effective way to get music fans to understand that downloading is illegal and can have serious consequences.119 In the words of top RIAA lawyer, Cary Sherman, "Enforcement is a tough love form of education."120 There is some evidence to support this view. After all, in light of the early headlines in most major media outlets, it would be remarkable if the lawsuits had failed to increase awareness of the record industry’s view that file sharing constitutes copyright infringement. An April 2004 survey revealed that 88% of children between 8 and 18 years of age believed that P2P downloading was illegal.121 At the same time, the survey also discovered that 56% of the children polled continue to download music. In fact, the children surveyed were more concerned about computer viruses than about being sued by the record industry. Another April 2004 survey, this one focusing on college-bound high school students, found that 89% of high school students continued to download music despite believing that it was against the law.122 This number decreased slightly in a 2006 survey by Piper Jaffrey that found that of 79% of high school students who obtain their music online, 72% use P2P networks to do so.123 In short, the RIAA’s "tough love" message has been delivered, and largely ignored.
The "educational" value of the litigation campaign is also diminishing because it has become "business as usual." Media coverage of the continuing lawsuit campaign has largely dissipated, with stories about the lawsuits migrating from the front to the back pages to not being covered at all.124 Indeed, in early 2006 the RIAA gave up its monthly press releases announcing how many individuals were being sued.
If the goal of the RIAA was to increase awareness of the copyright laws, that mission has been accomplished, albeit at the expense of financial hardship to nearly 30,000 arbitrarily chosen individuals. But as press attention fades, the "bang for the buck" provided by suing randomly-chosen filesharers has diminished as well.125 In other words, if the lawsuits are to continue indefinitely, they cannot be justified as an "educational" measure.
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Read up and take some notes:
http://www.eff.org/wp/riaa-v-people-years-later