alt Hacker NewsAFAIK you can completely ignore the letters, because taking you to court would be very costly and might not end well for them. However, they keep doing it because some people get scared and pay up right away.
AFAIK you can completely ignore the letters, because taking you to court would be very costly and might not end well for them. However, they keep doing it because some people get scared and pay up right away.
In the US it can be a pretty big deal, even if rights holders don't take you to court.
You can basically get banned by your ISP and it's not like there are a lot of ISP options.
ISPs in the US that are lax about it have been sued for millions[1] (and even in one case a billion, pending supreme court decision). [2]
[1] https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/cox-settles-disp...
[2] https://www.dentons.com/en/insights/alerts/2026/february/4/s...