No Rock And Roll Fun

MORE TEENS CAUGHT IN THE RIAA WEB: So, it's no surprise that the RIAA has managed to launch an attack on another minor, suing a 17 year old for illegal downloading. And, of course, they say it's not about the money:

"The idea here is not to win lawsuits is not to make money," Jonathan Lamy of the RIAA says. "It's to send a message that there are consequences to this activity...These are not casual downloaders," Lamy says. "The average number of songs on these individuals' hard drives that they are making available or downloading for free is around 800."

We've noticed the subtle shift from prosecuting uploaders to prosecuting any soft enough target they can, and that's what's going on here. But there's another interesting aspect to this case - the kid involved downloaded her music from gropster.com, a site which has a big splashy "100% Legal" button on its front page. Isn't is possible that this girl had been trying to do the right thing, and had heard about the exciting legal download services that the RIAA tell us might be the future of music, and elected to try one out? If the case does go to court, couldn't she have a pretty strong defence if she really did believe that it was a legal service? Wouldn't it make more sense for the RIAA to take on gropster.com than a teenage girl? Or would that be a bit harder for them?