Woman fined $1.9 million for 24 songs

[Sledgstone 8,672]

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/18/minnesota.music.download.fine/index.html?iref=topnews

A federal jury Thursday found a 32-year-old Minnesota woman guilty of illegally downloading music from the Internet and fined her $80,000 each -- a total of $1.9 million -- for 24 songs.

Jammie Thomas-Rasset's case was the first such copyright infringement case to go to trial in the United States, her attorney said.

Attorney Joe Sibley said that his client was shocked at the fine, noting that the price tag on the songs she downloaded was 99 cents.

She plans to appeal, he said.

Cara Duckworth, a spokeswoman for the Recording Industry Association of America, said the association was "pleased that the jury agreed with the evidence and found the defendant liable."

"We appreciate the jury's service and that they take this as seriously as we do," she said.

Thomas-Rasset downloaded work by artists such as No Doubt, Linkin Park, Gloria Estefan and

This was the second trial for Thomas-Rasset. The judge ordered a retrial in 2007 after there was an error in the wording of jury instructions.

The fines jumped considerably from the first trial, which granted just $220,000 to the recording companies.

Thomas-Rasset is married with four children and works for an Indian tribe in Minnesota.

How in the hell did they find her out of the millions of people to begin with? Did they pick an ip# at random and then pursue her identity thru her ISP? Or did her (or her kid's) username actually have their real name in it? It seems pretty ridiculous that a judge would actually award an amount like this.

[Kite 3,263]

who can afford that, and if she was smart she would have gone out and buy the original CD's thus it isn't illegal to own a backup,

[Sledgstone 8,672]

Owning a backup isn't illegal. Their basis for winning is the fact that the songs were being shared with others. I guess they can win an amount like that because the amount of times those songs were downloaded off of her would have been potential revenue for them. But because she was distributing their product for free, they can get away with smacking a woman around for sums of money she'll never even own. You'd think they'd go after the people that are sharing thousands upon thousands or songs or the sites that give people the access to accomplish file sharing.

[Kite 3,263]

probably a scare tactic

picked a random social security number, used the patriot act to invade their home, and well they are almost guaranteed to find a file sharer as long as the person has internet access

[Ladywriter 7,783]

these retard judges who think they can set a precedent with huge sums awarded are attention whores.