RIAA Nails 12-Year-Old Music Pirate
First settlement reached in copyright crackdown.
Robert McMillan, IDG News Service
Wednesday, September 10, 2003

The Recording Industry Association of America has settled the first of the 261 lawsuits it filed on Monday against digital music fans accused of uploading more than 1000 files on online music-sharing services.

Parent Pays Fine

The settlement was reached with the mother of 12-year-old Brianna Lahara, a user of the Kazaa file-sharing service. Lahara was featured on the cover of Tuesday's New York Post, which described the girl as being scared and on the verge of tears when she discovered she was being sued.

Sylvia Torres has agreed to pay the RIAA $2000 to settle the case, according to RIAA spokesperson Amy Weiss, who declines to explain how the figure was reached.

We don't want to talk about the process of settlements. We want people to know that trading music online is illegal and there are consequences, Weiss says.

I am sorry for what I have done. I love music and don't want to hurt the artists I love, the girl is quoted as saying in an RIAA news release.

Weiss also declines to say whether press coverage affected the terms of the settlement. However, Lahara's age was probably a factor, says to Gwen Hinze, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

I suspect the fact that she's 12 years old encouraged them to settle, says Hinze, who has been following the RIAA's campaign.

EFF Critical
The RIAA lawsuits, which seek thousands of dollars in damages from alleged peer-to-peer file swappers, are an escalation of the music industry group's battle against online file sharing. That battle has only recently begun to target individual users of peer-to-peer file-sharing sites such as Kazaa and Grokster.

The EFF, a digital rights advocacy group, has been critical of the RIAA's tactics in its battle against file swappers. The organization advises even contrite file-swappers against rushing into the RIAA's amnesty program, which accompanies the crackdown. People not under RIAA investigation could incriminate themselves as a result, according to the RIAA.

The point here is that suing 12-year-olds isn't actually achieving anything from the consumer point of view, Hinze says. And it isn't achieving anything from the music industry's point of view. It's not going to encourage people to buy more CDs. It's going to encourage people to be frightened.

PCW