The Recording Industry Association of America has announced that it is abandoning its legal strategy of bringing large-scale lawsuits against students and others who download music from the internet.

The RIAA has been bringing such suits for more than five years, often targeting students who used college networks for file-sharing. According to one expert quoted in the Chronicle article, such suits sometimes forced students to drop out of college.

Steven L. Worona,  the director of policy and networking programs at the education-policy group Educause, said the move demonstrated that the RIAA understands that “their sue-the-customer, scorched-earth business model has not worked.”