NEW YORK — The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has lowered the bar in its war against music piracy. In a surprising legal maneuver the RIAA slapped a four-month-old fetus with a Baby Doe warrant for being an accessory to its mother’s illegal downloading of three Trout Fishing in America CDs and several other CDs of children’s music.
“We have long maintained that the right to life does not include the right to free music,” said RIAA chairman and CEO, Mitch Bainwol. “What’s more, where there are rights there are also responsibilities, no matter where you happen to reside.”
Baby Doe’s mother, Michelle Winters, is a single woman who works in a library in Pocatello, Idaho. She has been given the option of settling with the RIAA for $7,500 or of facing a lawsuit that will seek to recover $25,000 for each of the 31 songs she downloaded.
For her part, Baby Doe can settle with the RIAA for $3,500 before she reaches her third birthday or face a lawsuit that will seek to recover $10,000 for each of the 31 songs her mother downloaded.
The Baby Doe lawsuit, in addition to marking the first time the RIAA has sued the unborn, is also unique because heretofore the watchdog association had been rumored not to bother persons who had fewer than one hundred songs in the share folders on their hard drives.
“Those days are history,” said Mr. Bainwol. “Just because a person has fewer than one hundred songs in her share folder does not mean she has no other illegally obtained songs on her computer—or that she didn’t download scores of other songs that she listened to and then erased.”
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