5:45 PM -- The Recording Industry Association of America has launched a new attack on the nation's college students, sending 503 prelitigation settlement letters to students at 58 universities throughout the U.S.

The trade group says that in the seven rounds of letters it has sent since launching its deterrence program in February 2007, it has targeted approximately 2,926 students.

But this time around, the organization was nice enough to give the students a reprieve, sort of:

How kind of them.

In the meantime, it's kind of an open question how well such a deterrence program actually works. The RIAA itself whines about its plight:

After all, if college students weren't already deterred by the rash of lawsuits that have been filed by the RIAA, I don't see how these letters, as symbolic as they are, are going to make much of a difference.

And while the RIAA bends over backwards to point out the amount of affordable, or even free, legal music that's out there, it's hard to imagine college students wanting to buy anything from a group that threatens to sue them. I mean, that's a heck of a business model.

— Ryan Lawler, P2P Proselytizer, Light Reading