71-Year-Old Pickles and 12-Year-Old Honor Students

We learned yesterday about the RIAA suing 71-year-old grandfather Durwood Pickle as part of its scorched earth campaign to deter file sharing. While Mr. Pickle is a sympathetic figure and didn’t do any file sharing himself, at least he is an adult. Today’s poster child against the campaign is LITERALLY a child:

The music industry has turned its big legal guns on Internet music-swappers – including a 12-year-old Upper West Side girl who thought downloading songs was fun.
Brianna LaHara said she was frightened to learn she was among the hundreds of people sued yesterday by giant music companies in federal courts around the country.

“I got really scared. My stomach is all turning,” Brianna said last night at the city Housing Authority apartment on West 84th Street where she lives with her mom and her 9-year-old brother.

“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?”

The Recording Industry Association of America – a music-industry lobbying group behind the lawsuits – couldn’t answer that question.

“We are taking each individual on a case-by-case basis,” said RIAA spokeswoman Amy Weiss.

….When reporters visited Brianna’s home last night, she was helping her brother with his homework.

Her mom said Brianna’s an honors student at St. Gregory the Great, a Catholic school on West 90th Street.

Brianna was among 261 people sued for copying thousands of songs via popular Internet file-sharing software – and thousands more suits could be on the way. [NY Post]

Durwood and Brianna, sued into submission by the RIAA. Oh well, at least they can live off of their ill-gotten gains. Wait! there are no ill-gotten gains? They deserve whatever they get anyway.