The chairman of the Senate’s permanent subcommittee on investigations began an inquiry Thursday into the industry’s crackdown against music swappers, calling the campaign “excessive.”
“Theft is theft, but in this country we don’t cut off your arm or fingers for stealing,” said Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., who was a rock roadie during the 1960s.
In a letter to RIAA President Cary Sherman, Coleman criticized the group for issuing subpoenas to “unsuspecting grandparents whose grandchildren have used their personal computers” and others who may not know their computer is being used to download music.

He asked the RIAA to furnish him with a list of its subpoenas; its safeguards against invading privacy and making erroneous subpoenas; its standards for issuing subpoenas; and a description of how it collects evidence of illegal file sharing.
The RIAA said it would be “pleased” to provide Coleman the information he requested.
“It will confirm that our actions are entirely consistent with the law as enacted by the U.S. Congress and interpreted by the courts,” the RIAA said in a statement.
When computer users download a copyrighted song, file-sharing software automatically makes it available for other Internet users to download, too. It is possible — and increasingly popular — to reconfigure the software to allow downloads but prevent sharing files, although this undermines the concept of public file-sharing networks.
The Pew survey said about 26 million American adults allow others to download music and other data files from their computers. These computer users were equally as likely to be men or women, and equally as likely to be white, black or Hispanic. But they tended to be younger, most often between 18 and 29.
The survey was based on interviews conducted during random telephone calls by Princeton Survey Research Associates during March, April and May among a sample of 2,515 adults in the continental United States. The margin for error was plus or minus 3 percent.