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.
I'd claim that cyclists tend behave a lot more like other motorists than like pedestrians The speed difference between a cyclists and a pedestrian is usually bigger than that between a car and a cyclists, at least in urban traffic. Pedestrians can be very unpredictable and they don't tend to signal very clearly what they are about to do, not to mention that a pedestrian can stop or turn around pretty much instantly.
The optimal solution is of course to build dedicated bike lanes, but if that's not a option I'd rather ride my bike on the road with other cars, than on a shared path with pedestrians. It's also a matter of attitude, roads are built to allow cars to travel between point A and point B as fast as possible. If cycling is to be seen as a form of transportation they also need to have access to proper infrastructure.
It's funny how the exact same "Bicyclists don't respect any rules and are always at fault"-attitude exists here in Finland. Yet it turns out that drivers are at fault in 70% of all bike-car crashes.
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.