Downloading Songs: Fined $1.9 Million

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It must be the weather. June has this odd effect on people. Bizarre court rulings, bizarre jury awards, conflict everywhere we look.

Tending to prove this theory, a federal jury in the case of Capitol Records v. Jammie Thomas-Rasset found a Minnesota woman gulity of downloading, or file-sharing, 24 songs from the Internet and fined her $80,000 for each song for a total of $1.9 Million.

This is the first copyright infringement case of its kind to go to trial in the US. The songs were priced at .99 cents each on the Internet and so the jury award is truly remarkable.

In the first trial in this matter the jury awarded the record industry $222,000. The record companies say they offered to settle for between $3,000-$5000 early in the case but the Defendant decided to stand up to the record industry.

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