Can you sue someone for reckless driving if they only own a bike? That's what the Walls family of tiny Rockmart, Georgia, was wondering after they were sued for illegal file sharing by the Recording Industry Association of America recently, despite claiming that they don't even own a computer.

According to the Rockmart Journal, the federal lawsuit filed by the RIAA alleges that Carma Walls infringed on copyrights by sharing music files over the Internet and that she "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."

The paper reported that the the Wallses were shocked to hear of the action on Friday from a reporter and that they were not aware of the suit or how it could have been filed.

"I don't understand this," James Walls said. "How can they sue us when we don't even have a computer?" In search for a possible explanation, Walls said that his family had lived at their current address for less than a year, and that perhaps the previous tenant had Internet access and was the real target.

In an update to its story, the Journal reported Monday that Carma Walls admitted the family did once own a computer, for about two months, but that they haven't had one in their house for more than a year. She also told the paper that during the brief period when the computer was in the home it was used to download music from Internet sites, but that she had no idea the sites she visited and the downloading she did was illegal.

The RIAA suit alleges that Carma Walls used a file-sharing program to download an eclectic list of songs such as Jewel's "Who Will Save Your Soul," Candlebox's "Far Behind," Bob Seger's "Still the Same," Poison's "I Won't Forget You," Journey's "Open Arms," TLC's "Unpretty" and "No Scrubs" and Whitney Houston's "Saving All My Love for You," the Journal reports.

According to the RIAA, the Walls infringement suit came after its investigators captured the screen name carmawalls@kazaa.com, and following a conversation between Walls and the RIAA's settlement experts in which she reportedly said that her family had a computer and used it to listen to music. The period during which the infringement allegedly took place was between January and August of 2005. Calls to Carma Walls for comment were not returned at press time.

In another case, this one in Michigan, the RIAA suffered a rare setback in its nearly three-year sting operation on illegal file sharing, in which it has filed lawsuits against 18,000 individuals and settled more than 4,300 cases.

The music industry organization had originally sued Candy Chan, but when the family matriarch was reportedly shown to have no knowledge of computers, the RIAA moved to add then-13-year-old daughter Britanny to the suit. The Chans' attorney objected to adding Britanny, and said the RIAA would have to appoint a court guardian to protect the interests of the minor.

The suit against Candy Chan was withdrawn last May, and, according to court papers, the RIAA asked the court to appoint a guardian that the Chans would have to pay for. But when the Chan family balked at paying for a guardian and the RIAA failed to provide the court with proper documentation for appointing a guardian, the judge dismissed the case.

A spokesperson for the RIAA said the dismissal was a matter of procedure, not guilt or innocence. "This is an unusual decision based on a procedural anomaly," spokesperson Jonathan Lamy said in a statement. "It has nothing to do with the merits of the case or the substance of copyright law. We have filed a motion asking the court to reconsider. To date, we have won the only two court decisions on the merits of our cases. The basic fact remains: Regardless of age, if you violate the law and steal from record companies, musicians, songwriters and everyone else involved in making music, you can be held accountable."

For complete digital music coverage, check out the Digital Music Reports.

[This story was originally published at 3:05 pm E.T. on 04.24.2006]