I say close the embassy down. Why do we ask our embassy workers to continue being exposed to a health risk that we clearly wouldn't tolerate here in the US? If countries were pulling their citizens out and recommending against travel in Beijing, China would at least have more incentive to address the problem.

You're correct that the notion that the plaintiff's ability to proceed or not should have little bearing on the decision of whether or not the subpoena is overly burdensome. You've left out the first half of the argument though, that it's not burdensome because it only requires the names and IP addresses. The judge seems at best guilty of poor (maybe even deceptive) wording here. I see nothing wrong with the actual basis for his decision though. I mean, how burdensome is it to cough up the info?

Seriously, as I have no technical background in this area, I'll ask a dumb question: Why can't a system admin just copy the relevant logs to a disk, turn it over to the RIAA, and let them sort it out? Note that I'm asking why they can't, not why they wouldn't want to.

I don't like the RIAA poking around in the schools networks fishing for students to sue any more than the next slashdotter but the argument "Gosh, it's just too hard for us to give out the info on our computers." seems kind of weak.