'First there was the mother, Patricia Santangelo, who has refused to roll-over to RIAA demands to pay their extortion fee because they claim to have identified her IP address as involved in Kazaa file sharing. Now Judge McMahon doesn't seem to be letting the RIAA have it all their way either in this case. Godwin's Law summarises the rebuke of Judge McMahon to the RIAA lawyer now that a court case has been filed. A transcript of the entire court appearance is also available', and includes such interesting exchanges as:

MS SANTANGELO: ...I no longer have that computer that ... they say the music was downloaded onto, because it had developed ... a lot of major viruses, apparently, and was wiped out and taken by my ex-husband. ... I have five children, so I wasn't real sure how [the downloading] had happened, to be honest.

THE COURT: I have some guesses.

MS SANTANGELO: I realized when I looked at [Exhibit B], the screen name that this Kazaa [user] was under doesn't belong to anyone in my family. ... Apparently, it belongs to a friend of my son, who is now 14.

...

THE COURT: -- I live in perpetual fear that something I don't know my kids are doing is going to come back and bite me in the butt. And the difference between you and me, Ms Santangelo, if it happens to me, it will be in the headlines of the New York Post.

MS SANTANGELO: That's true.

THE COURT: Right. So, anyway, you have my sympathy.

And:

THE COURT: I'm in no hurry to see this case resolved. So far, Mrs Santangelo has raised enough issues, including the use of a screen name or an account name -- not hers, but some other person's -- that suggests that she might have some really interesting defenses to this. And there are defenses that maybe even ought to be litigated. The whole concept of a young person using the parent's computer access is bad enough, but if this name is not hers, she doesn't pay for this account.

MR MASCHIO: They wouldn't have brought the action, your Honor, if they hadn't verified that very carefully.

THE COURT: Well, we'll see, won't we? We'll see.

Originally by CowboyNeal at Slashdot: Your Rights Online, 11:37 AM

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