“The record industry started another campaign yesterday aimed at making life more uncomfortable for online music-swapping fans.

Thousands of people trading copyrighted music online yesterday saw a message appear unbidden on their computer screens: ‘When you break the law, you risk legal penalties. There is a simple way to avoid that risk: don’t steal music.’

The messages, which seek to turn a chat feature in popular file-trading software to the industry’s benefit, reflect the latest effort among record executives to limit digital copying of their products.

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The association plans to send at least a million warnings a week to people offering popular songs for others to copy. Operated by a company that industry officials declined to identify, the automated system uses a feature in both KaZaA and Grokster, free software commonly used to share music files, that was designed to let users communicate with one another.” NY Times