Patricia Santangelo is in many ways the embodiment of the suburban mom. She is the mother of five children, ranging in age from 6 to 19. She is divorced, living in Wappingers Falls after growing up in Yorktown and Putnam County. At 42, she works as a property manager for a real estate company and is trying to get her own business off the ground.
What she is not, is someone expected to be at the center of the nearly 2-year-old war between record companies and online music file sharers.
But that’s exactly who she has become.
Santangelo was sued by several record companies in U.S. District Court in White Plains in February. The record companies said Santangelo’s home computer and Internet account were used to illegally trade copyrighted song files. The record companies say people like Santangelo are destroying the multibillion-dollar industry.
Record companies have filed about 13,300 similar federal lawsuits against Internet users across the country since September 2003. Nearly 3,000 of those lawsuits have been settled. The offending music traders have agreed to pay an average of $4,000 to $5,000 and promised not to illegally download copyrighted songs anymore.
None of the cases has gone to trial.
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