I think it is important to remember that in the Verizon case an ISP was forced to surrender its logs which helped track down one person who was considered active enough to be pursued. The ISP went to court to fight the order but was eventually ruled against. All ISP's keep logs of activity and this is not the first time that those logs have been used in a court case. This is, however, the first time that the logs were used to find a person rather than the logs of a person being extracted after a charge was made against them (e-mail threats etc).

I think it is very welcome that your ISP informed its users. Many people are not up to date on some of the privacy battles going on with the internet. Your ISP took the extra step to make sure you were aware that currently the law considers this P2P sharing of Copyright material illegal and an infringement. Maybe this was to cover themselves but I think it is more likely that they are trying to be helpful and are warning you that your usage can be used against you. I would lay bet that they are as opposed to this as most of us here. It isn't the ISP monitoring your usage you need to worry about, it is the other agencies that are striving to get access to the data which has long been considered private but not privileged and will soon be far more public than it should be unless the current trend is halted in some manner.

Orwellian, you bet, the courts have shown that Big Band Brother is watching and he can use private accounts to track you down.