Massive Fine For Illegal Downloader

October 05, 2007 | by Christopher Nickson

A Minnesota woman is fined $220,000 for illegally downloading music.

In a case eagerly watched by both the music industry and downloaders alike, Jammie Thomas, from Minnesota, was ordered by a jury to pay a fine of $220,000 for illegally downloading 24 songs. That works out at more than $9,000 a song.
 
She was the first person who’d been accused of downloading by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to fight the case in court. According to the record companies, Thomas has illegally shared 1,702 songs online.
 
To date, the RIAA has filed about 26,000 suits against illegal downloaders, but the vast majority have opted to pay a fine of a few thousand dollars rather than fight the case.
 
The trial, in Duluth, saw Thomas insisting that she had not illegally shared or downloaded music, and that she’d never had a Kazaa account. Interestingly, the jury didn’t find her guilty of actually sharing files, merely making them available.
 
This may not be the end of the case, as, according to a report in the Washington Post, which says that a number of copyright lawyers might be willing to represent Thomas if she appeals.
 
But in a statement to the Associated Press, Thomas’s attorney, Brian Toder, indicated she wasn’t looking that far ahead.
 
"This is a girl that lives from paycheck to paycheck, and now all of a sudden she could get a quarter of her paycheck garnished for the rest of her life."

Post Your Comment...Comments

Dario on Oct 5th, 2007 at 4:29 AM:

Having music on your PC has become dangerous, someone should write a program to delete and block all music files, this way, when your sued by the music industry, you can prove you "don`t do music anymore."

Unkown on Oct 7th, 2007 at 10:44 PM:

Hmmmmmmm ... If the record companies would come down from their high horse and see that either though they can sue people for large amounts, How in the world will they be able to afford to purchase their CD's? This will not help them out a bit, I say about 70% of USA population downloads illegally everyday. If they fined every single one of them, then we would have a lot of poor people on streets and a lot in jail cells. The record company should think about if this is going to come back and bite them in the butts in the future.

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