Since the RIAA began its policy of suing file sharers the organisation has issued 14,800 lawsuits in the last two years, but none of the cases have ever come to court.

But now it looks like these legal threats will be challenged as Patricia Santangelo, a mother of five from New York, will become the first person to fight the case in court. She claims that the downloading was committed by a friend of one of her children and as such she is not liable.

"I am still nervous about the whole thing," she told her local paper, the Journal News.

"I just got so aggravated about how threatening they were."

She points out that she'd never even heard of the Kazaa software used to download the music and that the user name on the software belonged to one of her children's friends. The RIAA is demanding $7,500 for copyright violation.

Her lawyer, Morlan Ty Rogers, told the paper that the case against her was very weak.

"Many of these lawsuits have been brought against people who are simply the names on the internet account," Rogers said.

"It's really surprising" no one has attacked the record companies' basis for the lawsuits, he said, "because the record companies' claims are actually very weak."

The RIAA has become something of a hate figure among computer users for its use of legal challenges. Legal cases have been bought against children, students and even dead people.