Single mother of five to fight the RIAA by refusing to settle

17 Aug 05 00:58 by Seán Byrne in category Uncategorized To news archive

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To date, the RIAA has filed over 13,000 federal lawsuits against users suspected of illegally sharing out copyrighted music. Now, a 42-year-old divorced mother of five who is one of those being sued is refusing to settle. According to her, she is shocked about being sued for something she did not do as she not store music on her computer, let alone run the file sharing software Kazaa on it. The lawyers representing the music industry offered her a chance to settle for $7,500, later reducing this to $3,500, convinced that she did make copyrighted music available online.

As a result, she is determined to fight the RIAA in this case. Rogers, the lawyer she hired suspected this to be the first case where a defendant could fight the RIAA and possibly win their case. So far, several others have tried taking the RIAA to court over their lawsuit, but have failed to get judged in their favour. Many people who were sued that did not download or share out anything decided to settle in fear that they could owe several hundred thousand dollars if they lost their case.

According to Rogers, the RIAA use the same complaint when they file its lawsuits, apart from the name and said that this is too vague to stand of for what should be in a copyright case. As the RIAA just file lawsuits based on the identity of the IP addresses they gather, chances are that the owners of the connection may not be liable at all, for example, some person outside the home could be downloading using a wireless connection, unknown to the household.

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>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 42-year-old divorced mother of five from Wappingers Falls, New York, didn’t set out to be a trailblazer, but when she was served with a lawsuit late last year claiming songs had been illegally shared using her computer, there was no way she was going to pay up to make it go away.

“I was shocked because I didn’t understand how someone could be sued for something they didn’t do. I didn’t know what was going on,” said Santangelo. “When [the RIAA's lawyers] called me, there was no music on my computer and they had an old IP address.”

Once the judge in the case suggested Santangelo hire a lawyer to help her case, she tapped New York’s Morlan Ty Rogers, who quickly suspected that the case might be the first one in which a defendant could fight the RIAA, and maybe even win.

I often heard of fraud caused by fraudsters sniffing people’s wireless network traffic, however now we hear about the danger of getting sued just by leaving their network open to potential downloader’s. Some people probably believe that if they tap into someone else’s network that they will effectively become safe from the music industry since they don’t have an ISP account, not realising the risk they are putting on the household (or business) that is providing the wireless network. Assuming this mother had a wireless network, this is likely what happened in this case.

Feel free to discuss and find out more about file sharing and its legal issues on our Music Download, Peer to Peer (P2P) & Legal Issues forum.

Source: MTV News

8 Comments

Devilbmxskater: Posts: 86; Posted on: 17 Aug 05 01:31

"The lawyers representing the music industry offered her a chance to settle for $7,500, later reducing this to $3,500, convinced that she did make copyrighted music available online." If the RIAA lawyers are convinced she didnt do it and she does have a wireless network then she shouldnt be responsable for it. I mean if she conviced there lawyers then there must be something worth fighing good luck to her and hope she wins her case.

Videopla: Posts: 7; Posted on: 17 Aug 05 02:08

Also, if I was her attorney, (and she had a wireless internet connection and she was not the guilty party), on her behalf I would sue the wireless network provider for it's liability. An argument could be made that they facilitated the law breaking by not restricting the range of their networks. Will the RIAA sue Starbucks because Starbucks customers may have downloaded music over their wireless networks? What liability do companies have that allow customers to use their networks and the customer violates the law? Any? It's the same argument that PSP providers have used. And in law since a corporation has the same standing as a person, could you claim that there was not Equal Protection under the law for individuals if RIAA only goes after individuals and not the facilitators (corporations that provide wireless networks). That is, they (RIAA) were discriminatory in their lawsuits, in not sueing corporations and only individuals. Could a case be made that they were practicing discrimination. Discrimination is against Federal law. Or is that another kind of discrimination not covered by law?
[edited by Videopla on 17.08.2005 02:16]

VioletHue: Posts: 49; Posted on: 17 Aug 05 04:18

Obviously, from the two previous reactions to this story, the story itself is misunderstood. The lawyers are convince she DID do it. She thinks it was someone using her own wireless home network. I have an unsecured home wireless network. I keep it unsecured because I have several things connecting to it and it is too difficult to keep everything connected if it needs passwords and such. But I have frequently found others using my network. Some of my neighbors connect if my signal is stronger than theirs. I have even connected using their network. It happens automatically, you just tell windows to connect using whatever connection it finds with the strongest signal. If I was connected to their network and downloaded songs, it would look to the RIAA like it was them downloading as the songs were going to their IP address.

Zohg: Posts: 34; Posted on: 17 Aug 05 04:34

Obviously you didn't read it either. The assumption that she has a wireless network is not made in the article, only by the person who posted the article on this site. There are a lot of allegations about the RIAA's method's that aren't based along the wireless stealer theory. There have been allegations about their methods of determining who. IP addresses change which makes it difficult to determine who had the IP address unless accurate records are kept. Videopla, I think in this case the wireless network provider would be her. She would have setup the wireless router in her house. Technically she may be violating her ISP's rules by broadcasting their service. She may also be reliable since she created this opening. (that would be a really dumb ruling and hurt a lot of legitimate stuff though) Unfortunately in this world Starbucks would likely be held responsible if they couldn't identify the real culprit. They have to get money from someone.

src666: Posts: 19; Posted on: 17 Aug 05 04:39

This is the exact same extortion tactic that DirecTV used when suing people who bought standard smart card programmers. They claimed that anyone who bought the devices was guilty of pirating their signal, and then offered a settlement that was slightly less expensive than fighting them in court. I guarantee this case will never see a trial. They will do the same as DirecTV and either offer a lowball (sometimes $0) settlement, or they will drop the case just before trial.

jasaiyajin: Posts: 67; Posted on: 17 Aug 05 05:30

Ahahahah, the law, on your side, ahahahhaahhaahha..... good luck... disguising IP, spoofing, WTF does the RIAA know, money, nothign else.

heystoopid: Posts: 307; Posted on: 17 Aug 05 06:45

Choices, choices, choices, go for broke girl!!!!!!!

shimman: Posts: 596; Posted on: 17 Aug 05 07:25

riaa, they are the axis of evil....don't you think mr president of usa?

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Single mother of five to fight the RIAA by refusing to settle

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