The long long running Santangelo P2P lawsuit possibly came to a close last week - with surprisingly few dramas given the way this story has run to date.
As much previously reported, the always lovable Recording Industry Association Of America began legal proceedings against New York mother of five Patricia Santangelo back in 2005 accusing her of copyright violation because music was being shared via her home PC using Kazaa. Despite being offered an out of court settlement by the RIAA, Santangelo opted to fight the lawsuit on the basis that she had never personally shared music via P2P and could therefore not be liable for any violation. Despite lacking legal representation for part of her defence, Santangelo's case enjoyed some successes not to mention popular support, so much so that the RIAA asked for their case against her to be dismissed towards the end of last year.
Given that Patricia Santangelo almost definitely did not share music online via her home PC, the RIAA has concluded that the copyright violation must have been committed by one of her children and thus began legal proceedings against her daughter Michelle, now 20 and therefore a safer target for litigation than her 16 year old brother Robert (although the violation is alleged to have taken place when Michelle herself was 16). That lawsuit came to court last week and Michelle failed to respond to the case against her - so the RIAA won by default.
The Santangelos had been expected to claim that a friend of the family had, in fact, committed the file sharing on their PC and there was some evidence to back that claim (mainly the Kazaa identity on the machine was similar to that used by a specific friend elsewhere). That said, the RIAA claimed Michelle had admitted to sharing music via P2P, and that a friend of Robert had said the two of them had shared music together via Kazaa. Quite why the family chose not to respond to the latest lawsuit isn't clear, and their lawyer wouldn't comment on Friday.
The RIAA was awarded $70 for ever one of the 41 songs that the industry association alleged were illegally shared via the Santangelo's PC - meaning Michelle is now liable for $30,750. Whether that judgment in the RIAA's favour brings to an end this long running litigation that has caused the US music industry all sorts of PR problems, and no doubt cost the labels considerable more that 30 grand in legal fees, is yet to be seen. It is quite common for the US federal courts to set aside judgments made by default at a defendant's request, so that a case can be reassessed on its actual merits. Whether that will happen here, as I think I just said, remains to be seen.