First the RIAA sue non-PC & Mac users and now the Deceased

src="http://www.cdfreaks.com/contentimages/newsimages/1196372059" width=117 align=right
border=0> Gertrude Walton of Fayette County hated computers, her daughter said.

That did not stop the recording industry from accusing the now deceased 83-year-old Mount Hope woman of illegally trading music over the Internet.

More than a month after Walton was buried in Beckley, a group of record companies named her as the only defendant in a federal lawsuit. They claimed Walton made more than 700 pop, rock and rap songs available for free on the Internet under the screen name ’smittenedkitten.”
 
On Thursday, a spokesman for the Recording Industry Association of America acknowledged that Walton was probably not the smittenedkitten it is searching for.

‘Our evidence gathering and our subsequent legal actions all were initiated weeks and even months ago,” said RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy. ‘We will now, of course, obviously dismiss this case.”

Walton’s daughter, Robin Chianumba, lived with her mother for the last 17 years of her life and said her mother objected to having a computer in the house. Chianumba said she didn’t know anything about the record company’s claims. And she said she does not know anything about the screen name.

‘My mother was computer illiterate. She hated a computer,” Chianumba said. ‘My mother wouldn’t know how to turn on a computer.”

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