We haven’t got the guts to go after real pirates off the coast of Malaysia, but we can go after old men and their grandsons. We’re tough.

JS Online: Movie downloads could cost Racine man up to $600,000 — This is rich. Here, in a nutshell, is everything that is wrong with the world. The MPAA must be ever so proud of itself. Good work boys. Go get ’em.

A Racine man who says he doesn’t even like watching movies, let alone copying them off the Internet, is being sued by the film industry for copyright infringement after his 13-year-old grandson downloaded four movies on their home computer.

The Motion Picture Association of America, on behalf of three major Hollywood studios, filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against Fred Lawrence, a 67-year-old retiree. The suit seeks as much as $600,000 in damages for downloading four movies over iMesh, an Internet file-sharing service.

The lawsuit comes after Lawrence, a former employee of Snap-on Inc. and seasonal worker for the City of Racine, refused a March offer to settle the matter by paying $4,000.

“First of all, like I say, I guess I’d have to plead being naive about the whole thing,” said Lawrence. He said his grandson, then 12, downloaded “The Incredibles,” “I, Robot,” “The Grudge,” and “The Forgotten” in December, not knowing it was illegal.

Lawrence said his grandson downloaded the movies out of curiosity. The family already owned three of the four titles on DVD, and his grandson deleted the computer files immediately, he said.

Found by Mad Dog mike