Caught Downloading Copyrighted Material—Now What?

Lisa over at Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com/371653/caught-downloading-copyrighted-materialnow-what has just been caught downloading copyrighted materials over Bittorrent. Well, kinda. She received a letter saying that she "may" be prosecuted by the copyrighters and that it would be within their right to do so. So the question now is what should Lisa do? Should Lisa go on her merry way and continue downloading copyrighted materials, should she stop and hope nothing happens, should she be punished? Well, I think Lisa should stop downloading immediately, for her own sake, because downloading copyrighted materials without paying for them is illegal and she can very well be prosecuted. But even more than there, there is the principle of it all - people work hard to make songs and movies and it is only right to pay for their work. Of course, there would be those who argue that all the money goes to the big studio honchos and not the little cameraman way down on the ladder, but we forget that there is a trickle down effect - less money for the honchos means less money for the little people. Granted though, on the company's part - it is important for them to make their works easily accessible and fairly priced. For example, I'll admit that I have downloaded some songs before in the past for free, but that was because they were hard to find foreign songs that I couldn't find anywhere else for a reasonable price (sorry, I will not pay $50.00 for a 7 CD compilation to get the one song that I want). I , however, never download popular American songs for free, because I know I can easly buy them off ITunes instead. Sure, I'll be a dollar poorer than if I had downloaded it for free, but it's well worth it for the risk and for, more importantly, my peace of mind.