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RIAA Sues 12-Year Old Girl
tcp100 noted an article running at fox about
The RIAA suing a 12 Year Old girl: "'I got really scared. My stomach is all turning,' Brianna said last night at the city Housing Authority apartment where she lives with her mom and her 9-year-old brother."
The New York City papers are all over this -- it's on the cover of both the Post and the Daily News. They skew really sympathetically towards the girl and her family, who apparently were paying $29.95 a month for Kazaa "service", and apparently thought there were thereby legit.
This is really going to help the cause against the RIAA's draconian retributive lawsuits, as it will appeal to the hearts of the populace at large. Bad PR, RIAA, baaaaad PR.
:wq
Your grain of salt for the article:
Fox is one of the four motion picture studios in the MPAA that do not share revenue with a major U.S. record label. (The others are Disney, MGM, and Paramount.) Anything that makes the RIAA look like the bad guy benefits Fox indirectly, as every dollar spent on recorded music is a dollar not spent on a Fox movie.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Let's not miss the point. I don't think the RIAA knew she (or even that it was a 'she') was 12; it was sent to the household where the ISP account is registered. Next stage is that the parents say "shit", we're in trouble, let's contact the papers and try to get out of this mess by way of our 12-year old daughter. It may or may not have been this girl who downloaded the music, this point is moot. The parents are responsible as they most likely set up the account.
- Oisin
PGP KeyId: 0x08D63965
If they're suing the person responsible for the internet connection, how did they come up with the girl's name?
The RIAA fully realize that they are the 'bad guy' and that they are seen as such by the eyes of the world. They have one goal in mind, and one goal only--protect their way of business and revenue stream at any cost.
I agree this looks really bad on the RIAA (I don't remember minors being targetted before), but those who think this spate of publicity is going to stop them are dead wrong. They've already shown that they're willing to go to any length to kill the file-sharing phenomenon.
I can see the outcome of this case right now: The RIAA will probably have to respond to the negative publicity and probably drop the suit against the twelve-year-old girl. The rest of the cases will go on as planned. One poor target isn't going to be the downfall of their enforcement operations.
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
This is like an early Christmas present for RIAA detractors. Their lawsuit-by-scattergun approach has caught the worst target possible: A 12-year-old honor student who had no idea she was doing anything wrong ("But we were paying for it!"). What a PR nightmare.
Too bad it won't last. This particular case will get resolved as quickly and quietly as possible. You'll be able to feel the breeze from the RIAA quickly brushing it under the rug. Or, worse, if they're smart they will dismiss all charges (and give little Brianna lots of free music) in exchange for her too-cute 200-word essay on "Why Filesharing Is Wrong".
The EFF and other RIAA opponents could get heavy mileage out of this case if they tried, but I fear they just aren't coordinated enough to counter the RIAA's spin.
Never approach a vast undertaking with a half-vast plan.
They paid a $30 service fee, leading them to believe it was ok. This isn't about not knowing the law, this is about Kazaa leading them to believe that by sending them money, they'd be legal. That's the real travesty here.
The family paid the money, they just paid the wrong people.
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Something cleverHere is a more important legal question. Can non-emancipated minors assume debt? I don't think so, this is why banks won't issue credit cards or loans to minors without an additional signature from an adult. Even if RIA successfully sues this girl, she won't have to and cannot be made to pay. The lawsuit against her is completely stupid.
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
Well, I am waiting for them to sue someone who really matters, like Bush or his daughters, or heck even the Pope would be entertaining
You know, someone with a billion dollars to fight back. If they are truly doing blind suing they should hit one of those sooner or later, and if they don't, that says something about this "blind suing" that they claim to be doing.
Suing blindly leads to uncomfortable lawsuits.
~ kjrose
We can blame Fox all we want but they are really the only ones who could do an article like this. Who else:
CNN - Owned by AOL Time Warner (Warner Music, etc.).
MSNBC - Joint Venture with Microsoft (not about to attacked RIAA).
ABC News - Owned by Disney (we know how they feel about Copyrights).
CBS News - Owned by Viacom (also owns MTV)
Fox, as far as I can tell, is the only one not totally in bed with the RIAA and if there is anybody who can piss them off and get away with it it is Rupert Murdoch.
Although it *does* beg the question: if a 12 year can't assume debt, then how exactly did they get her name in the first place?
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Her mom shoulda signed up with the ISP, no? So her mom is the one paying the ISP bill.
And her mom is probably the one that registered Kazaa.
And if the RIAA claims they don't know any personal details about the people they're suing -- then how did they get the name of the girl?
Unless her mom did something weird like register a bunch of credit cards in her daughter's name in order to get credit. But, nah, no one would do that
(Just curious
The article quotes the girl's mother as saying "There's a lot of music there, but we just listen to it and let it go"
The defense arguments will be interesting when they undoubtably say the clients didn't have the technical knowledge to understand that "download and listen" really means "download and provide." It's possible that users deleting the file transfer log line in Kaaza (erm, not that I know what that is or have ever seen it before) may have assumed the file was gone too. But lo, the hundreds of songs they "just listened to" were saved and now available for mass download from their machine by the whole world.
Sheesh this is going to be fun!
Now imagine for a moment that you're the 14 year old child living in that house, with a comptuer in your room that's hooked into the home network. Or heck, even an 19 year old, on break from college. Yep, that child just might have kazaa. Oddly enough, man wealthy people don't give their kids piles of money, some of them want their children to actually earn a respectable living. Can you imagine that?
Downloading copyrighted material IS illegal, and I doubt you'll catch any higher ups doing it
I know someone who's father is the president for a very very very large IT corporation, and he's got 30gigs of mp3s available for anyone to sift through at all hours of the day. Although his father might care about this, he certainly doesn't.
Higher ups tend to have more money to spend.
Yes, but they can be just as lazy as those who aren't as rich, and it's a hell of a lot easier downloading the latest single off Kazaa than it is to walk into the store and buy the album. And did it ever occure to you that rich people might be rich because they don't like to throw money away, are thrifty, or know a good deal when they see one?
Higher ups probably don't have the knowledge to get on a P2P network, or don't care enough,
Only a fool would think someone richer is either dumber or more ignorant than they are. <sarcasm>Yeah, they probably don't even know what the internet is and still send birthday wishes via telegram.</sarcasm>
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
Well, there's at least one artist whose done filesharing. In the April 26, 2001 issue of Rolling Stone Joe Perry (guitarist for Aerosmith) says something along the lines of:s p?cf=18) but they only give you an excerpt, not the full story.
I really hope they don't shut Napster down. I've been using it to introduct my kids to rare old stuff that you can't find anywhere else.
I looked up the story online (http://www.rollingstone.com/features/cs867main.a
I've been waiting for something like this to happen. Now the parents can go after no only the RIAA, but also their ISP. The internet privacy act protects children under 13 from just this sort of thing. When the RIAA sopneaed the girl's ISP, they were not allowed to give her information up.
Looks like we finally have a case that'll make this circus stop.
Learn something new.