The suits are among 9,900 filed against individuals since 2003 by the Recording Industry Association of America on behalf of member companies such as Warner Bros. Records, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Arista Records and Capitol Records.

The lawsuits accuse people of using the Internet or an online media distribution system to download copyright recordings without paying to distribute them to the public and to make them available for distribution.

The suit against Vickey Goss of Alexander City, filed in Montgomery early this year, alleges that hundreds of songs were downloaded on her computer. Goss was unaware of the downloads by her daughter, then 17, according to her attorney, Angela Hill.

"Her daughter didn't have any criminal intent," Hill said.

Goss's offer to settle the case for $400 or $500 was rejected, Hill said. U.S. copyright laws allow for damages of $750 to $30,000 for each song illegally downloaded on a computer.

The RIAA says the lawsuits are necessary to protect its members. Jenni Engebretsen, a spokeswoman for the industry group, said the suits are filed to combat the rampant copyright infringement involving people illegally sharing music files across the Internet.

"The lawsuits are an important part of our overall effort to discourage illegal downloading and encourage music fans to turn to legal services," Engebretsen said. "Individual users of illegal file-sharing networks should remain on notice: You can be caught, and there are consequences to your illegal actions."

Three of the nine lawsuits filed in Montgomery-based federal court have been settled. Engebretsen said two of nine people sued in Mobile and one of six sued in Birmingham have settled.

An Atlanta attorney representing David Lackey of Huntsville in a similar suit said RIAA has the wrong David Lackey.

"He didn't do anything," attorney John Israel said. "He's not that kind of person."

From http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/state/11262739.htm

"He didn't do anything," attorney John Israel said. "He's not that kind of person."

Doesn't matter ....lock him up and throw away the key, he is to be made an example to the rest of the dumass American low life scumbags that have to work for a living and have no power to fight us big corporate gaints.

No one was sued for downloading.

Kind of like old fashioned thugs demanding protection money.

Here's a tip to the RIAA... I heard that there are a bunch of people going to their local public library and copying cd's for free... SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE DONE... I would start by raiding the records of every public library and finding out who checked out what, then stake out each persons house and car and see if they have any blank CD's lying around... That should be enough for you to get a search warrant and raid these same houses and check to see if any of these CD's lying around have your members music on them... Better yet, just remove all CD's and DVD's from the public libraries... That way people wont be tempted to illegally copy those albums.

OFF TOPIC, but still on.

If you think of File Sharing as the worlds largest online library with literally billions of bytes of information, the posting of such files completly changes ideologically...

How would the RIAA look if their campaign had the adjoining headline... "RIAA attempts to keep their products out of the hands of poor and ultra rural population... That's not fair, and it's not right... If I can get the latest peice of CRAP from my suburban pretty well stocked library, why shouldn't everyone be able to...

Theft is wrong, but the true crime is ignorance.

Good point George, they weren't sued for downloading. They can't be sued for downloading, since it isn't illegal. They were sued for sharing their files with other people, which should be commonly called distributing, not downloading.

Well Robbin...that could be done if our local library didn't pull all of their cds for fear of being sued for that and sold them for 1.00 each. They did manage keep their audio books on cassette. Of course I'm behind on the times since I don't have a cassette player yet. They also have a nice vhs collection to borrow (sarcastic since I don't own a vhs player either).