Washington - The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced this week that it has sent another round of 401 "pre-litigation settlement letters" to users of campus networks at 12 universities alleged to have engaged in illegal file-sharing, making for a total of more than 5,400 such letters sent since the record label trade group began the practice a year ago.

The letters offer reduced financial penalties to students to settle the claims, rather than facing copyright infringement lawsuits.

The RIAA said that over 2,300 of the recipients of its letters have chosen to settle, while it has filed suit against 2,465 who did not respond to them.

The group cited data from market research firm NPD that found college students accounted for more than 1.3 billion illegal music downloads in 2006.

"Unfortunately, too many students continue to ignore the law and get music from illegal services like Limewire that do not invest a penny in nurturing music or compensating the artists, labels and the thousands of behind the scenes workers bringing music to the public," said the RIAA's Cara Duckworth.

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