The $23,000 11 year old...

Image via Wikipedia I'd heard horror stories of the *great business practice* of the RIAA suing their customers, but it had never hit home...until last week.

Was talking to a good friend, Rachel W. who told me the following story.

Despite warning her 11 year old not to download music illegally online, one night a babysitter came over and introduced the 11 year old to Limewire.

In the digital age equivalence of peer-pressure she said, "yeah, it's illegal, but everyone does it."

Well, fast forward a few months and Rachel W. gets a note from Verizon. Her IP address has been identified and the RIAA is coming after her.

Her husband is a lawyer, but from all looks of it, she's got no out.

They get sent to a website, where they fork over $1000 PER SONG.

Yes, that's right, the 11 year old downloaded 23 songs.

And as if that isn't bad enough, she knew of people in her suit whose kids had downloaded hundreds of songs, but paid the same amount.

Needless to say, she's irritated and wants revenge.

She just doesn't know what to do.

Oh, and she's $23,000 worse off for it.

BTW, Joe Biden is one of the RIAA's top-voting Senators and proposed a $1bn bill to monitor P2P ('filesharing') networks to catch people like Rachel W's 11 year old daughter.