RIAA – are you mad?

I’ve been watching the actions of the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) quite a bit recently. After dishing out several thousand lawsuits, they’re now targetting a poor little 12-year-old girl called Brianna LaHara, from the Uppper East Side of NYC.

She has so far received 261 lawsuits from the RIAA, and says, “I got really scared. My stomach is all turning.”

“I thought it was OK to download music because my mom paid a service fee for it. Out of all people, why did they pick me?”

Brianna’s mother pays Kazaa (the p2p file sharing monster) a $29.99 service charge to KaZaA for the company’s music service. Brianna, however, thought this meant she could download songs at will. Tssskk.. fancy a 12-year-old thinking that eh???

That’s OK then – she’s only 12 – how did she know ? Well, it turns out that the RIAA (being the hugely wealthy organisation that they are) don’t quite see it that way. Although they take each “theft” on a case-by-case basis, Cary Sherman (RIAA President) said….

“Nobody likes playing the heavy and having to resort to litigation, but when your product is being regularly stolen, there comes a time when you have to take appropriate action.”

I’m presuming he then waddled off to his private jet and ordered the pilot to take him to his exclusive island in the Caribbean.

Brianna and the others sued yesterday under federal copyright law could face penalties of up to $150,000 per song, but the RIAA has already settled some cases for as little as $3,000.

More news on this and source – New York Post