Found this on www.msnbc.nbc.com
Mother of 5 locked in battle with music industry
Judge: Woman accused of pirating songs 'doesn't know Kazaa from kazoo'
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. - 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 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 e-mail."
Going it alone
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 sat alone at the defense table before U.S. 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 evidence exchange.
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, said 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."Ah hah! Take that music industry! I really hope that woman wins the case and counter-sues for thousands and gets back all her money and THEN some. Then it'll be a real victory - not for music downloaders but for common (and not exactly well-off) folk. Let this be a lesson to these music bigwigs sitting in their big mansions with all their F-ed up "power" that if they want to stop music piracy, they're better off using the carrot rather than the whip. By victimising and finding fault with poor folk and threatening everyone in general with lawsuits, they'll only gain more enemies while not alleviating the problem in the slightest.
Let's face it: Most people DO have pirated/downloaded music files on their computer. True, some are still downloading, but there are some people who downloaded a thing or two in the past (aka napster days) but have now stopped. Should the music industry be allowed to "peek" into everyone's computers and pick the weakest victims (aka those without $$ to get a lawyer) to sue? Should they even be peeking? Obviously Micro*cough* does it all the time, in a way, but i'm sure the industry's probably crossed the line of Law a few times already, in doing so.
If music sales aren't good, maybe it's the music's fault, not that of the imaginary "mass downloaders" who lurk in the shadows. Perhaps the industry should stop releasing all these R&B/Rap trash which have totally lousy tunes/lousy singing/crappy beats. There're lots of dudes nowadays who make crappy music CDs, but sell lots of 'em by advertising their rich & lavish lifestyles via MTV, etc to appeal to the consumer. How idiotic. Oh, wait, how did they get rich in the first place..?
