Cecilia Gonzalez was laid off two weeks ago, and three of her five children are home sick with the flu. But the 29-year-old has bigger problems on her hands: according to the terms of a summary judgment handed down last month, she owes five major record companies a total of $22,500 for illegally downloading 30 songs off the Internet. Sony Music, BMG, Universal Music Group, the Atlantic Recording Corporation, and Latin-music giant Fonovisa are after her for more than three-fourths of what she made last year as a secretary.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Gonzalez’s attorney, Geoff Baker, now sees the case as something bigger than a dispute over copyright law. A founding partner of the Oak Park firm Dowell Baker, which specializes in intellectual-property matters, he’s working pro bono because he doesn’t like the record companies’ tactics. “In our view, Cecilia should have the right–does have the right–under the Seventh Amendment of the Constitution to have a jury decide whether or not she is an innocent infringer and to have a jury decide whether or not she should have to pay any damages whatsoever,” he says. In issuing a summary judgment, “the judge took that right away from her.”
Gonzalez was born in Guanajuato, Mexico, and her family moved to Chicago in the late 70s, settling in Pilsen. She dropped out of high school in the ninth grade and worked a series of clerical jobs; in 1998 she married her husband, Armando, who’s currently kitchen manager at Pompeii in Lakeview. Gonzalez had just given birth to their youngest child when the downloading trouble began.
In her deposition, Gonzalez testified that she and her husband spent about $30 per month on CDs, and that “her ability to download music off the Internet for free did not affect how many CDs she and her husband ended up buying.” But the RIAA wasn’t interested in splitting hairs or discussing intentions. Even if Gonzalez had copied only her own CDs onto her computer, the act of making those songs available on a file-sharing network–even accidentally and for just a few days–still would’ve been illegal.
But district court judge Blanche Manning rejected Baker’s argument. On January 14 she ruled that Gonzalez’s fair-use and innocent-infringer defenses were without merit. She cited the “old adage that ignorance is no defense against the law” and found Gonzalez liable for the entire $22,500.
Baker doesn’t think the record companies stand to gain financially from a victory in the case. “The chances of them ever getting a monetary reward out of Cecilia are slim to none,” he says. “She’s somebody who purchased their products religiously, she’s got five kids to feed, and she doesn’t have a job now. Why they chose to go after her, I don’t know. It still doesn’t make sense to me why this case goes on.”
