[LINK] big fine

[Jan Whitaker]

http://www.theage.com.au/technology/music-pirate-fined-24m-20090619-cn4u.html
A US jury has ordered a 32-year-old woman to pay $US1.92 million 
($A2.4 million) in damages for illegally downloading 24 songs in a 
high-profile digital piracy case.

Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a single mother of four from the US state of 
Minnesota, was found liable for using the Kazaa peer-to-peer 
file-sharing network to download the songs over the internet.

The jury took just under five hours to reach its verdict.

It ordered Thomas-Rasset to pay $US1.92 million dollars - or 
$US80,000 ($A100,000) per song - to six record companies: Capitol 
Records, Sony BMG Music, Arista Records, Interscope Records, Warner 
Bros. Records and UMG Recordings.

Thomas-Rasset had been convicted previously, in October 2007, and 
ordered to pay $US220,000 ($A275,000) in damages but the judge who 
presided over that trial threw out the verdict calling it "wholly 
disproportionate" and "oppressive".

The Recording Industry Association of America and major music labels 
have brought suit against thousands of people for illegally 
downloading and sharing music, with most agreeing to settlements of 
between $3000 and $5000.

Thomas-Rasset was the first among those being sued to refuse a 
settlement and instead took the case to court.

In December, the RIAA said it would stop suing people who download 
music illegally and focus instead on getting Internet Service 
Providers to take action.

The move away from litigation represented a major shift in strategy 
for the music industry group, which had filed lawsuits against some 
35,000 people for online music piracy since 2003.



Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com

Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or 
sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
~Madeline L'Engle, writer

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