January 30, 2004
Last September (2003) Annie Leith was sued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for downloading digital music files from the Internet. Annie was only 14 years old.. Her family was unable to fight the massive multimillion dollar legal team the RIAA assembled and had to settle the lawsuit for $3,000.00.

Back then, a scant 5 months ago, the RIAA was certain that "selling digital music" was absolutely impossible because of the rogue download sites. Today, with the amazing success of a dozen profitable download sites, the RIAA is going to showcase Annie in a multimillion dollar Super Bowl ad, sponsored by Pepsi Cola and Apple's iTunes.

Here, with apologies to Paul Harvey, is the rest of the story. Annie downloaded over 900 songs using the popular Kazaa program. But when the RIAA tired of losing legal battles against the slippery services like Kazaa, they turned their attention to private consumers. Annie was caught!

The lawsuit against a 14 year old captured a lot of national media attention and further tarnished the already blacked reputation of the RIAA. The RIAA is undecided about future lawsuits and the courts recently put a stop to their gestapo like subpoena techniques.

Now Annie gets a chance to appear in a nationally televised commercial that put a twist on her costly experience.

The ad promotes a digital music giveaway offer from Pepsi-Cola and Apple Computer Co.'s iTunes Music Store. Pepsi soft drinks will include a code for a free song download on iTunes.

In the ad, Annie proudly says she was among hundreds of music fans sued for downloading songs without paying for them, then vows to continue doing so — on iTunes.

"This ad shows how everything has changed," said RIAA chief executive Mitch Bainwol.

the WIZARD couldn't possibly agree more.