Internet copyright enforcer Rightscorp has told investors some revelatory details about its strategy in its second-quarter earnings call, as reported by TorrentFreak.

Rightscorp was founded to be a kind of RIAA-lite, getting online pirates to pay record companies and other rights-holders without the need to resort to high-stakes litigation. Instead, it creates e-mail notices demanding $20 per song from users it deems "repeat infringers" and insists that ISPs forward those notices.

The company is growing fast, but is still way, way in the red. Last year it earned $324,000 in revenue, while spending more than $2.1 million to run its operations. This year it's earning more revenue: $440,414 in the first six months of the year. However, operating costs during the same period have already hit $1.8 million.

Rightscorp's two marquee clients are BMG and Warner Music. Together, those two clients account for around one-third of Rightscorp's income.

Looking for a "piracy wheel clamp"

The company is now working with more than 140 Internet service providers, although they provide differing levels of cooperation. Rightscorp's pitch to these ISPs is that since it has ironclad evidence of which users are "repeat infringers," they're obligated under copyright law to forward the notices; otherwise the ISPs become liable to a high-stakes copyright suit.

The company's goal has long been to move away from the simple forwarding of e-mail notices and push the ISPs toward actually shutting off Web-browsing abilities until Rightscorp and its clients get paid. That was reiterated on an August 13 earnings call. The system should be less like a "piracy speeding ticket" and more like a "piracy wheel clamp," explained company CEO Robert Steele.

“[What] we really want to do is move away from termination and move to what’s called a hard redirect, like, when you go into a hotel and you have to put your room number in order to get past the browser and get on to browsing the Web," said Steele.

Rightscorp said that it has settled 75,000 cases—but it won't say how many customers have received notices and blown them off. Most of those settlements have been for much more than $20, Steele said.

“[For] most people, piracy is a lifestyle, and so most people are getting multiple notices,” he told investors. "So we’re closing cases every day for $300, $400, $500 because people got multiple notices."