Single Mother Takes On RIAA In Downloading Case

Over the past three years, thousands of people have settled lawsuits brought by the Recording Industry Association of America for illegally uploading copyrighted songs. But Patricia Santangelo doesn't plan on being one of them.


The RIAA has filed federal lawsuits against more than 13,000 Internet users since September 2003, with nearly 3,000 of those accused settling for an average of $4,000-$5,000 (see "RIAA Sues 784 For File-Sharing, Gives Props To Supreme Court Ruling"). To date, none of the other cases have advanced beyond the early trial stages. In Santangelo's case, as in the others, the RIAA's computerized 'bot detected copyrighted songs available for uploading on her computer, but in what Rogers claims is a novel defense, it's the very fact that the RIAA found the songs that could end up exonerating his client.

"As an exhibit in the complaint, they typed up a list of six songs that RIAA investigators downloaded from a shared account that was supposedly on my client's computer," Rogers said. "The complaint said those files were there for sharing, but they have no evidence that anyone did share them. For them to prove copyright infringement, they have to show that there was unauthorized distribution of a copyrighted file to the public. If they knew some 16-year-old who downloaded those songs from my client's drive, that would be copyright infringement, but if their own investigators did it, it's not distribution to the public. A copyright owner cannot infringe on their own copyright."

Santangelo said the lawyers representing the recording industry offered her a chance to settle the case for $7,500, and later reduced the sum to $3,500, but she refused. "I just felt like what they were doing was wrong and how they did it wasn't proper," said Santangelo, who added that she's never used Kazaa and that the screen names on the complaint did not belong to any of her kids.

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