The RIAA and the music labels have gained a reputation for playing hardball in their war against piracy and illegal song downloads. Among the most famous examples are how they sued a 71-year-old grandfather who rarely used his computer, and a 12-year-old girl who was an honor student and sincerely believed that she had paid for the music. The RIAA did not care who was actually responsible for the downloads, and even sometimes not bothering to verify whether downloads had occurred at all. They wanted to scare people by playing hardball, and the message was crystal clear: no one is exempt. You download our music, we sue you.

Well, there are exceptions, apparently. Specifically, if you’re rich and your daddy runs one of the record labels. Edgar Bronfman, head of the Warner Music Group, said that “I’m fairly certain that [my children] have [illegally downloaded music], and I’m fairly certain that they’ve suffered the consequences.”

“Fairly certain”? Clearly, the guy doesn’t want to fess up with any certainty in public, but it’s clear his kids did pirate music. As for the consequences? Were they sued for up to $150,000 for each song they downloaded? Well, no suit has been filed in court against them, so the “consequences” they “suffered” apparently did not involve what the rest of us seem to be liable to suffer should we break the same rules. Apparently it involved Bronfman explaining what he feels is “right and wrong” to his kids. “I explained to them what I believe is right, that the principle is that stealing music is stealing music.” Did he explain that stealing is a crime, and that his kids should cough up huge wads of cash or maybe go to jail? It is a serious crime, you know. But I guess Bronfman never got to that part. It was enough to explain to them that they were embarrassing daddy, so stop it or else he’ll be real disappointed in them.

Tell that to 12-year-old Brianna LaHara (now 15), one of the first to be sued by the RIAA and the labels; her mother paid $29.99 a month to KaZaA and misguidedly believed that because they were paying for the service, that they were not stealing. They didn’t even keep the music on their computers–they listened to it and then threw it out. But they were sued, and eventually settled for $2000. Most of the people sued are given this “offer,” which demands payment of thousands of dollars, knowing that the people will cough up the cash even if they are innocent, as lawyer’s fees alone will cost them more than that. (In some circles, that’s called “extortion.”)

The Bronfman children should have known better than any other kids in the world that downloading from P2P sites is illegal. And yet all they got was a talking-to.

Poverty is not an excuse here. College students who could not afford to pay the extortion settlement fees were told by the RIAA to drop out of college or instead go to a cheap community college so they could afford to pay the mega-billion dollar record labels a few thousand bucks.

OK, so you would not expect the head of a music label to sue his own family or relegate them to cut-rate go-nowhere schools–but it smacks of a cop letting his own kids of the hook when he catches them driving drunk or stealing something. A double standard. If anything, it plays up the fact that the RIAA’s campaign is not one of justice, but one of terror. Naturally, they are not going to sue each and every one of the millions who have downloaded from filesharing services. They just want to scare people into believing that it can happen, and that it might happen to them. And the RIAA has the clout to ram this kind of thing through–although satellite TV businesses who tried the same technique–mass-litigate suspected pirates of content then try to get them to cough up settlements–was ruled against, the technique found to be illicit.

Which lessens the hypocrisy not one iota.