It looks like the Recording Industry Association of America's subpoena campaign against peer-to-peer file swappers and their hosts isn't being limited to college students anymore - a July 24 report says parents, roommates, and even grandparents are on the RIAA's hit parade for possible expensive lawsuits.
"The idea really is not to be selective, to let people know that if they're offering a substantial number of files for others to copy, they are at risk," RIAA president Cary Sherman told the Associated Press. "It doesn't matter who they are."
That didn't exactly thrill a California resident who turned up on an RIAA subpoena list and was contacted by the Associated Press. "Within five minutes, if I can get a hold of her this will come to an end," said Gordon Pate, who told the AP his 23-year-old daughter, Leah Pate, installed a file swapping program using an account that turned up on the RIAA subpoena list. "There's no way either us or our daughter would do anything we knew to be illegal," he said, adding his daughter would stop at once. "I don't think anybody knew this was illegal, just a way to get some music."
The AP said it tracked such subpoena targets in Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, New York, San Francisco, and other major area neighborhoods.
"This scares me so bad I never want to download anything again," said West Virginia student Amy Boggs when reached by the AP. "I never thought this would happen. There are millions of people out there doing this."
But a Fresno grandfather, Bob Barnes - who said he went online to download hard-to-find European recordings and otherwise stopped using P2P programs unless his grandson visited - thinks he and other such families haven't got much to worry about regarding actual lawsuits. He told the AP he felt the RIAA was more likely to use cease-and-desist orders than full-fledged lawsuits. "I think they're trying to scare people," Barnes said.
And some legal experts who might be seen as representing interests that might be sympathetic to the RIAA position are warning the music industry against stepping into waters where they might be drowned by public outrage. "If they end up picking on individuals who are perceived to be grandmothers or junior high students who have only downloaded in isolated incidents," said Los Angeles attorney Christopher Caldwell, who works with the Motion Picture Association of America, to the AP, "they run the risk of a backlash."
