Copyright holders have been sending those kinds of settlement demands in Finland as well. They seem to be monitoring the torrent swarm for relevant IP addresses so that they can demand that ISPs hand over account holder's names. ISP are by law required to hand over this information if the users has shared something illegally to "a significant degree".
They settlement demands have been between 500€ and 3000€ and they have usually been lowered in the cases that have gone to court. A few have however ended up footing legal costs in the tens of thousands.
> ISP are by law required to hand over this information if the users has shared something illegally to "a significant degree".
ISP's only hand over data by court order but in the past few years, court orders have granted this right to pretty much every request from the copyright holders. ISP's are now contesting this and there were two recent judgements in the courts to allow ISPs not to hand over the data. See this [0] (in Finnish).
So the situation is now better in Finland, partially because the predatory abuse from copyright holders' law firms sending out tons of "fines".
They settlement demands have been between 500€ and 3000€ and they have usually been lowered in the cases that have gone to court. A few have however ended up footing legal costs in the tens of thousands.