That's what they want.

If they sued the kids downloading this shit they'd be demolished by society.

This way they get what they want and we pay the cost because nobody cares enough.

That's not the point here. The music companies all know that they make way more money on music that gets pirated than music that doesn't; lots of studies have borne that out. The point of this ruling is that it lets them extract money from people who DON'T have a relationship with an infringing party. The neighbor of the kid who downloaded the torrent.