From the time the RIAA started its lawsuit campaign, it has filed over 26,000 lawsuits, many of which have been targeted at students.  Since February, 3,700 college students have received letters from the recording industry and are being asked to settle for between $3,000 and $5,000 to avoid significantly higher penalties if found violating copyright law. 

This Union Leader article looks at 90 students across three New Hampshire colleges and universities, who have been targeted by the RIAA and dozens of these are fighting the music industry instead of settling.  As with lawsuits targeted at home users, quite often the RIAA ends up targeting the wrong people.  For example, three students from the University of New Hampshire were misidentified as a result of the RIAA supplying IP addresses involved in illegal file sharing from last spring, at a time when the IP addresses belonged to their previous owners.  This led to the new owners of these IP addresses receiving letters accusing them of something they never carried out.

Of the 90 students who received letters between the New Hampshire colleges & universities, 34 have been issued with "John Doe" suits, 8 have been issued with named suits and 28 students have settled their suits.  Dave Barry, the father a New Hampshire University student who received one of the letters, claims that going after students is financially motivated and that "They're money grubbers".  He said that his daughter paid to download music and that she honestly thought she was in full compliance with the law.  As a result, his family refuses to pay the settlement.  On the other hand, the family has yet to even receive legal papers.

Thanks to Quema34 for letting us know about this news along with the following comment:  The key phrases in the 3rd paragraph point to a largely consistent pattern in RIAA tactics that have "misidentified" and "mistakenly" pegged some as pirates. A student named Dave Berry sums up what service the RIAA truly performs rather well: although it paints a picture of stopping illegal activity, it primarily chooses those that are most likely to be "easy money" (those attending expensive colleges) and that can't defend themselves (or risk having to leave college because of not having enough money left)--especially with the minimum 30K price tag attached to defending oneself.