When University of Georgia junior Lindsay Gritzmaker heard that the record industry had pulled the trigger and was suing individual music downloaders, she got the same feeling as when she's speeding and sees a roadside cop: "Oh no, don't let him catch me," Gritzmaker said.

So on Monday, the day the lawsuits were filed, Gritzmaker deleted the music file-sharing program Kazaa from her computer, and one of her two roommates did the same. On the youth grapevine, from UGA to metro Atlanta high schools, the lawsuits and music downloading are suddenly a hot topic.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which represents the major record labels, may have finally hit on a solution to the downloading of copyrighted music via the Internet, something about 60 million Americans do regularly.

By suing 261 individual downloaders on Monday for federal copyright violations, it has struck at its own consumer base, but may put a serious dent in a phenomenon that has been growing since Napster hit in 1999.

The lawsuits targeted people with more than 1,000 songs on their computer hard drives, but RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy said the suits are "only the first wave."

"They know they cannot stop this completely, but it will curtail it slightly," said Perry Binder, a Georgia State University legal studies professor and expert in Internet law.

Even the threat of lawsuits, announced in late June, seems to have put a significant damper on downloading. From June to August, people using Kazaa, the most popular file-sharing program, declined from 6.5 million to 4.8 million per week, a 26 percent drop.

Although the lawsuits have caused anxiety among some downloaders, others aren't concerned.

"I bet most Georgia State students have downloaded music. How are they going to track all of them?" said Julia Wysocki, an 18-year-old GSU freshman.

And even as the RIAA goes after users of the major post-Napster programs like Kazaa, Morpheus and Grokster, many other file-sharing programs have been appearing, some of which are designed for greater anonymity.

"I use a Korean server to download so they can't track it," said Georgia State student Jungmin Lee, 19.

The RIAA suits target the person who pays for the Internet connection over which the music was downloaded, which means in some cases parents are being sued when it was their teenagers downloading music.

Adam Nevis, 42, a property damage adviser from Canton, said when he heard about the RIAA crackdown, he warned his 14-year-old daughter Samantha about downloading songs off their shared computer and cable modem.

"I understand they're looking for the big boys, but I'm not going to take that chance," he said. "I told her to lay low."

The industry argues that downloading has caused the huge drop in CD sales of 26 percent since 1999 (the year Napster appeared), a loss of $4.3 billion. Critics of the industry say other reasons are also to blame.

Even though the RIAA campaign appears to have cut down on file-sharing, it hasn't helped CD sales -- just the opposite.

In the seven weeks since the RIAA announced it would sue downloaders, CD sales fell 54 percent compared to the same period last year, although whether any of that was spurred by anti-RIAA campaigns on the Internet or grass roots resentment is impossible to determine.

-- Compiled by staff writers Shane Harrison and Rodney Ho.