Judge orders teen file-sharer to pay

The teenager's mom, Patricia Santangelo, was one of the few parents of file-sharers who refused to settle out of court after being sued by the Recording Industry Association of America. She took her case to the national media, and the RIAA dropped it. But less than a month later, the RIAA "won a default judgment against her 20-year-old daughter," the Associated Press reports. "Federal Judge Stephen Robinson ordered Michelle Santangelo to pay $750 for each of the 41 songs she is accused of downloading illegally - a total of $30,750 - because she failed to respond to the record companies' claims." It's not clear if this ends the case against the Santangelos. When Patricia Santangelo was sued in 2005, she said she'd never downloaded songs and if her children had, the makers of the file-sharing software they used should be blamed. The AP adds that the RIAA has sued more than 18,000 file-sharers or their parents.