This time, as part of their campaign of intimidation, they’re suing a family that doesn’t even own a computer:
A Rockmart family is being sued for illegal music file sharing, despite the fact that they don’t even own a computer.
A federal lawsuit filed this week in Rome by the Recording Industry Association of America alleges that Carma Walls, of 117 Morgan St., Rockmart, has infringed on copyrights for recorded music by sharing files over the Internet. The lawsuit seeks an injunction and requests unspecified monetary damages.
The lawsuit states, “Plaintiffs are informed and believe that Defendant, without the permission or consent of Plaintiffs, has used, and continues to use, an online media distribution system to download the copyrighted recordings, to distribute the copyrighted recordings to the public, and/or to make the copyrighted recordings available for distribution to others.”
This came as shocking news to the Walls family, who were notified of the lawsuit Friday afternoon by a newspaper reporter. James Walls, speaking on behalf of his wife and family, said they have not been served with legal papers and were unaware of the lawsuit.
After being shown a copy of the court filing, Walls said he found the whole thing bewildering.
“I don’t understand this,” Walls said. “How can they sue us when we don’t even have a computer?”
Walls also noted that his family has only resided at their current address “for less than a year.” He wondered if a prior tenant of the home had Internet access, then moved, leaving his family to be targeted instead.
And the RIAA wonders why people consider their campaign to be nothing more than a blatant shakedown, with the RIAA even going so far as to sue children. Most of the people targeted can’t afford to fight the lawsuits and end up settling, whether they actually share music or not.
