We have come for your children

Those guys at the RIAA are quite charming, aren't they? They tried to bankrupt Patricia Santangelo by issuing a demand for cash, claiming they had evidence she'd been downloading songs without their permission. She argued, quite plausibly, that she had done no such thing.

So now the RIAA are trying to sue her kids, instead:

"In short, each of the defendants participated in the substantial violations of plaintiffs' copyrights at issue and then concealed their involvement, standing idly by as Patricia Santangelo repeatedly protested their innocence and chastised plaintiffs for filing allegedly frivolous litigation," the complaint said.

Yes, not only have they come back for a second crack at the same family, but they're trying to suggest that they're more-or-less doing it on Patricia's behalf: ooh, this'll show her kids what they get for sitting around trying to let Mom take the rap. It's a little like they've decided to stop selling recordings of music and now see themselves as some sort of supernanny.

The trouble is, this doesn't sit comfortably with what the RIAA has said in the past - first, it's more or less admitting that their constant claims that the sins of the children can be visited on the parents was wrong: for if they could, legitimately, sue parents for downloading done by the kids, they wouldn't now be having to come back to try and sue the kids instead.

Secondly, it means the RIAA has effectively admitted lying again - when it was pushing for an out-of-court settlement it told Santangelo it had conclusive proof that she had been illegally downloading music; now, it seems, they've evidence that, erm, contradicts that.

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