[LINK] woman fined $222,000US for music distribution

[Jan Whitaker]

http://www.theage.com.au/news/World/Woman-fined-US222000-over-downloads/2007/10/05/1191091320458.html
http://tinyurl.com/2o7gnp

Woman fined $US222,000 over downloads
October 5, 2007 - 8:59AM

The recording industry has won a key fight against illegal music 
downloading when a US federal jury found a woman shared copyrighted 
music online and levied $US222,000 ($A251,886) in damages against her.

Record companies have filed some 26,000 lawsuits since 2003 over 
file-sharing, which has hurt sales because it allows people to get 
music for free instead of paying for recordings in stores.

This was the first such case to go to trial.

Many other defendants have settled by paying the companies a few 
thousand dollars.

The jury ordered Jammie Thomas, 30, to pay the six record companies 
that sued her $US9,250 ($A10,495) for each of 24 songs they focused 
on in the case. They had alleged she shared 1,702 songs in all.

The companies accused Thomas of offering the songs online through a 
Kazaa file-sharing account.

She denied wrongdoing and testified that she didn't have a Kazaa account.

During the three-day trial, the record companies presented evidence 
they said showed the copyrighted songs were offered by a Kazaa user 
under the name "tereastarr".

Their witnesses, including officials from an internet provider and a 
security firm, testified that the internet address used by 
"tereastarr" belonged to Thomas.


Jan Whitaker
JLWhitaker Associates, Melbourne Victoria
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com
personal: http://www.janwhitaker.com/personal/
commentary: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/

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