Posted on 12/25/2005 3:39:47 PM PST by Momaw Nadon
WHITE PLAINS, New York - It was Easter Sunday, and Patricia Santangelo was in church with her kids when she says the music recording industry peeked into her computer and decided to take her to court.
Santangelo says she has never downloaded a single song on her computer, but the industry didn't see it that way. The woman from Wappingers Falls, about 80 miles north of New York City, is among the more than 16,000 people who have been sued for allegedly pirating music through file-sharing computer networks.
"I assumed that when I explained to them who I was and that I wasn't a computer downloader, it would just go away," she said in an interview. "I didn't really understand what it all meant. But they just kept insisting on a financial settlement."
The industry is demanding thousands of dollars to settle the case, but Santangelo, unlike the 3,700 defendants who have already settled, says she will stand on principle and fight the lawsuit.
"It's a moral issue," she said. "I can't sign something that says I agree to stop doing something I never did."
If the downloading was done on her computer, Santangelo thinks it may have been the work of a young friend of her children. Santangelo, 43, has been described by a federal judge as "an Internet-illiterate parent, who does not know Kazaa from kazoo, and who can barely retrieve her email." Kazaa is the peer-to-peer software program used to share files.
The drain on her resources to fight the case — she's divorced, has five children aged 7 to 19 and works as a property manager for a real estate company — forced her this month to drop her lawyer and begin representing herself.
"There was just no way I could continue on with a lawyer," she said. "I'm out $24,000 and we haven't even gone to trial."
So on Thursday she was all alone at the defense table before federal Magistrate Judge Mark Fox in White Plains, looking a little nervous and replying simply, "Yes, sir" and "No, sir" to his questions about scheduling and exchange of evidence.
She did not look like someone who would have downloaded songs like Incubus' "Nowhere Fast," Godsmack's "Whatever" and Third Eye Blind's "Semi-Charmed Life," all of which were allegedly found on her computer.
Her former lawyer, Ray Beckerman, says Santangelo doesn't really need him.
"I'm sure she's going to win," he said. "I don't see how they could win. They have no case. They have no evidence she ever did anything. They don't know how the files appeared on her computer or who put them there."
Jenni Engebretsen, spokeswoman for the Recording Industry Association of America, the coalition of music companies that is pressing the lawsuits, would not comment specifically on Santangelo's case.
"Our goal with all these anti-piracy efforts is to protect the ability of the recording industry to invest in new bands and new music and give legal online services a chance to flourish," she said. "The illegal downloading of music is just as wrong as shoplifting from a local record store."
The David-and-Goliath nature of the case has attracted considerable attention in the Internet community. To those who defend the right to such "peer-to-peer" networks and criticize the RIAA's tactics, Santangelo is a hero.
Jon Newton, founder of an Internet site critical of the record companies, said by e-mail that with all the settlements, "The impression created is all these people have been successfully prosecuted for some as-yet undefined 'crime'. And yet not one of them has so far appeared in a court or before a judge. ... She's doing it alone. She's a courageous woman to be taking on the multibillion-dollar music industry."
Santangelo said her biggest issue is with Kazaa for allowing children to download music without parental permission. "I should have gotten at least an e-mail or something notifying me," she said. Telephone and e-mail messages seeking comment from the Australia-based owner of Kazaa, Sharman Networks Ltd., were not returned.
Because some cases are settled just before a trial and because it would be months before Santangelo's got that far, it's impossible to predict whether she might be the first to go to trial over music downloading.
But she vows that she's in the fight to stay.
"People say to me, `You're crazy. Why don't you just settle?' I could probably get out of the whole thing if I paid maybe $3,500 and signed their little document. But I won't do that."
Her travail started when the record companies used an investigator to go online and search for copyrighted recordings being made available by individuals. The investigator allegedly found hundreds on her computer on April 11, 2004. Months later, there was a phone call from the industry's "settlement center," demanding about $7,500 "to keep me from being named in a lawsuit," Santangelo said.
Santangelo and Beckerman were confident they would win a motion to dismiss the case, but Judge Colleen McMahon ruled that the record companies had enough of a case to go forward. She said the issue was whether "an Internet-illiterate parent" could be held liable for her children's downloads.
Santangelo says she's learned a lot about computers in the past year.
"I read some of these blogs and they say, `Why didn't this woman have a firewall?' she said. "Well, I have a firewall now. I have a ton of security now."
All she has to do to win the case is show up in court with copies of commercial CDs containing the songs. By the "fair use" doctrine, you are allowed to possess backup copies of music and software you own. Whether you burned the copy yourself or downloaded it is irrelevant. You have a license.
If I were this woman, I would go to the nearest used music store and buy all the required CDs with cash and bring them to court with me.
With no paper trail, the RIAA cannot prove that she did not have a license at the time the music was downloaded.
Case closed.
I recently returned from working aboard a ship for 3 months. I prepaid my cel phone bill for the appropriate amt of time before I left. Upon my return, I noticed a $13 or $14 monthly rate hike on my phone bill. Turns out, somehow I "ordered" unlimited text messaging while at sea! (I was indeed in several US possessions, Puerto Rico, St Thomas where I had cel phone svce, so it is a tecnical possibility that I COULD have ordered the svce) But I knew I hadn't ordered it. Indeed, it would seem odd for someone to order an "unlimited" svce and then not use it ONCE...as was the case per my bills. Nevertheless, I could not talk my way out the bill....because the phone was in my and only my possession...the phone co. (T-Mobile) had the serial number of my phone and time the order was placed..(info they could obviously make up) and so I'm stuck with those few months of charges. Can't "protest" the charges as they were ordered from the phone itself! So I guess.... I leaned up against a bulkhead and my butt ordered the service.
Hopes she wins and others take her lead and fight these corporate lawyers.
Ask Sony about that with their latest copy protection scheme gone badly wrong.
Exactly. If the downloads were $2 a piece and there were 200 illegale downloads, the damage to the company would be $400. That's all the company is entitled to as part of a settlement.
Nice of him to say that after he sucked up $24,000 of her financial resources.
Let's face it...all this crap amounts to is a scheme set up by a bunch of lawyers to assure that they and their other lawyer friends make a lot of money while trampling our privacy rights.
Shakespeare was right.
"Or, better yet, download them from usenet"
You know I have always wondered with the binaries groups on usenet get almost NO attention. If you have a fast net conenction you can fill up hard drive after hard drive with everything. Or so I am told ;-)
True, and I would like to send $5 to this woman's legal defense fund.
I'm serious. I believe it is a crime to threaten legal action in this manner. The fact that it was done by phone, and not via some sort of correspondence says it all. (Who us? We don't make calls like that.)
ML/NJ
Most people don't know Usenet exists, and not everyone has access to it anyway.
bump
I know I will catch hell for saying it but I say F them. It would tickle me pink to see all these so-called artists going broke. The less money they get the less they have to buy their drugs with. Yeah yeah I know thats a bad attitude.
As for this woman's situation, I think it's telling that no lawyer seems willing to represent her without payment up front. There must be no chance of winning a countersuit and tapping the RIAA's deep pockets, or the sharks would be beating down her door.
Her kids obviously did it. If it were my kids, I'd send them into court to plead their case.
Turned out the document could be purchased from public sources for 12 bucks.
Small wonder lawyers are so vested in disarming the populace. They know what's going to happen when enough citizens get fed up with this legalized extortion.
I don't agree with your analogies. The founders thought the protection of intellectual property as well as real property so important they put it in the Constitution. I do agree that it's been perverted, specifically the term of protection. Works were originally protected for 14 years after the authors/artists death, extendable up to 28 years. Today the restrictions are ridulous, 95 to 120 years! These are no longer designed to protect authors' or artists' heirs, but to protect the heirs/stock holders of immortal entities, like Disney, Time/Warner or Sony. They are boons purchased directly from our parliament of whores by corporations.
Phone system exploiters have always been known as phreakers. In the early days there was a bit of overlap because hackers needed access via the phone system to get into computers. Phreakers were more interested in making long distance calls for free.
People don't download, computers download.
Therefore they should require all computers be registered and anytime someone buys a disk they have to be over 18 and give their name and address.
We could start a national group, we will call it the NCA, National Computer Association,
OUTLAW computers.
/*scarasm off
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