According to Torrent Freak the United States judicial system is currently overloaded with new cases. These are the copyright holders are trying to obtain the personal details of BitTorrent users who allegedly shared their material online. Once this information is handed over, they then offer the defendant the opportunity to settle the case for a few hundred up to a couple of thousand dollars, thereby avoiding a full trial and potentially even bigger financial penalties.
More than 60,000 cases have been dismissed and settled and the estimated number of defendants who are still at risk lies at 145,417. The largest single case involves the film The Hurt Locker. As of May this year this lawsuit targeted 24,583 alleged BitTorrent users, and the first batch of settlement letters have been sent out to the people who pay for the allegedly-infringing Internet connections. None of the cases have made it into a full jury trial as the copyright holders ask for in their original complaint.This means that the evidence they claim to hold has not been properly tested.
There is also a high number of cases where the person involved was not the actual infringer. But since the copyright holders prefer settlements above full trials and because defendants don’t want to risk a $150,000 fine, so far no one knows how accurate the evidence is.
More here.