The Recording Industry Association of America in effort to curb online piracy, sent an instant message to hundreds of thousands of digital music traders with a warning that they could “easily” be identified and face “legal penalties” for swapping copyrighted songs.

The instant message campaign is part of a new anti-piracy “education initiative” launched by the RIAA, the Christian Music Trade Association and the Gospel Music Association.

The barrage of messages started on Tuesday.

About 200,000 users of the Grokster and Kazaa file-sharing services were targeted and millions more will get notices in coming weeks, said Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, the trade group for the music companies.

The instant message reads, in part:

“It appears that you are offering copyrighted music to others from your computer. …When you break the law, you risk legal penalties. There is a simple way to avoid that risk: DON’T STEAL MUSIC either by offering it to others to copy or downloading it on a ‘file-sharing’ system like this. When you offer music on these systems, you are not anonymous and you can easily be identified.”

The RIAA acted on behalf of the world’s biggest record labels owned by AOL Time Warner, EMI Group Plc, Bertelsmann AG, Vivendi Universal and Sony Corp.

Using song titles, users who post copyrighted songs for others to download were targeted for the message, said the RIAA.

(via Reuters)