James Delahunty
29 Apr 2009 20:21
Patricia Santangelo, a mother of five, has been involved in a legal battle with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) since 2005. Originally, Patricia herself was accused of downloading and sharing songs from artists such as Michael Jackson, using the Kazaa P2P client. Patricia denied it and it became pretty obvious quickly that she simply did not have the knowledge required to share music at the time.
The RIAA eventually dropped the case against her, but decided to sue two of her children, Michelle and Robert, aged 20 and 16 at the time. It said that Michelle had admitted piracy in a deposition and that Robert had been implicated by a family friend. They denied wrongdoing. However, since both are now in college and feel that the case is holding them back, they agreed to pay $7,000 in damages.
They paid half the amount April 20 and are to make six payments of $583.33 by October. "We are pleased to have reached an agreement with the Santangelos," Cara Duckworth, spokeswoman for the RIAA. She didn't give any information on how much the RIAA spent to reach a $7,000 settlement, but did say: "We don't break out costs per case, and it's not a question of it being 'worth it' or a 'victory.'"
Jordan Glass, a lawyer for the Santangelos, said that the record labels never expected someone like Patricia to fight off a lawsuit, since they, "billions of dollars of corporate power, legal intellect, experience, and she had nothing." "This was preventing the kids from moving on," he said. "Sometimes you reduce the damages so much it's time to call it quits."