Mom Fights Downloading Suit On Her Own

[sagaxx 0]

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.ADVERTISEMENT

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.

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Damn , this is industry tryes to stop the piratery but all they are suing is a bunch of people that never downloaded a song .

[Sarah81 0]

That's just stupid. The RIAA is full of itself, as usual.But at the same time, if this woman is letting other peoples' children - minors - use her computer, then she should have at least a vague idea of what they're doing. If this friend of her kid is really the one who downloaded all these MP3 files, then she's lucky. The kid could have gotten into adult material, or otherwise gotten into serious trouble.So ... basically ... I think she should pay attention to what other computer users - at least the underage ones - do with her computer. I don't think that she should pay the fine, but I hope that she pays more attention after this.

[sagaxx 0]

well if someone used her computer she is in charge for what that person did on the computer , so if she didn`t do anything i think somebody did , anyway she is inocent in one way but guilty if she let someone on her computer .