By Elizabeth Armstrong

The New York Times is reporting that the Recording Industry Association of America has warned 204 people suspected of swapping music online that it plans to file lawsuits against them. The RIAA began mailing the warnings last week, a month after launching its initial campaign against file sharers. The difference: This round of targets is being notified before the lawsuits are filed, as opposed to after.

RIAA President Cary Sherman makes it sound like hand-holding - "We want to go the extra mile and offer illegal file sharers an additional chance to work this out," he announced - but this "extra mile" may be little more than an attempt to avoid the embarrassment that followed last month's suits against a 12-year-old girl and a grandmother accused of sharing the latest hip-hop hits (the RIAA dismissed the lawsuit as a gesture of good faith).

So far, according to The Associated Press, 64 (out of a total of 465) suits have been settled at an average of $3,000 per settlement. That's $192,000, a tiny fraction of the millions the industry reports to have lost to file-sharers.

A couple questions that quickly come to mind: Does this mean there will be a minimum and maximum age for eligible file-sharing targets? And will seeming mismatches (a grandma with a penchant for P. Diddy, say) be dismissed "on good faith"? If so, I'll be sure to tell my 17-year-old cousin that swapping Brahms is OK, so long as he plays the part of a Goth freak who only touches Marilyn Manson.