A warning from the Recording Industry Association of America for illegal file sharing might not be sent to students before a notice of pending legal action, an organization spokesperson said Wednesday.

According to Brian Rust, a UW-Madison Division of Information Technology spokesperson, the university received six “pre-settlement” letters late last week identifying copyright infringers.

Cara Duckworth, an RIAA spokesperson, said pre-settlement letters are notices before a formal lawsuit is filed against an individual that offer lesser fines as an alternative to trial.

Rust said UW-Madison has sent “cease and desist” letters for years under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which require individuals to remove peer-to-peer services and all copyrighted material from their network. He said the university gets about 35 of these types of letters per week.

“Within the last year and a half, we’ve been getting pre-settlement notices, which kind of ratchets it up a step,” he said, adding targeted individuals typically receive a cease and desist warning before a pending lawsuit letter.

However, Duckworth said this is not always the case because the copyright act notices and pre-settlement letters are two different RIAA copyright “enforcement tracks.”

“A lot of the times individuals who receive pre-litigation letters may not have received a DMCA letter in the past,” she said.

Duckworth also said sometimes students may comply with a cease and desist letter, but it does not guarantee they will not receive a pre-settlement letter.

“Unfortunately, that does happen,” she said. “That would indicate that we had captured evidence during the time the individual was illegally distributing copyrighted files.”

Duckworth said RIAA sends pre-settlement letters on a monthly basis and that most incidents of music theft occur on university networks.