The industry sued 261 people on Monday and has promised to sue hundreds more in coming weeks as it strives to stamp out music piracy it blames for a three-year slump in CD sales.

The Recording Industry Association of America settled the first of the suits Tuesday for $2,000 - with the mother of a 12-year-old defendant, Brianna LaHara of New York. Brianna was accused of downloading more than 1,000 songs using Kazaa.

RIAA Vice President Matt Oppenheim said he was not surprised to see young and old alike caught in the industry's snare.

"We know that there are a lot of young people who are using these services and we totally expected that we would end up targeting them," Oppenheim said. "As we have said from the beginning ... there is no free pass to engage in music piracy just because you haven't come of age. We're not surprised and we're not deterred."

This week the music industry announced another crack down in a effort to protect industry profits.

The industry opted to target individuals earlier this year, figuring music fans who prefer to get their music online now are beginning to have viable options to do so legally through for-pay music download services like Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store and Buy.com's BuyMusic.com

Many of these individuals have gotten out of the habit of buying CDs," Bernoff said. "They think CDs are too expensive." That view led Universal Music Group to slash the wholesale price of its CDs and recommend retailers sell them for $12.98 from $18.98.   An amount equals  to the average allowance a child receives in three weeks.

The price cut was an olive branch to music fans, many who have already soured on the industry because of practices that kept CD prices artificially high. The industry settled a lawsuit with 43 states last year who had accused the recording companies of conspiring in the 1990s to set a minimum price for CDs.