In a landmark trial for the music industry, a 30-year old Minnesota mother has been ordered by the federal court to pay over $220,000 to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for illegally sharing audio songs online.
Jammie Thomas was found guilty by the jury of a federal district court in Duluth, Minnesota of sharing more than 24 songs on Kazaa, a popular peer-to-peer file sharing network. Thomas has been ordered to shell out $9,250 for each of the songs that she had shared online, though the sum could have been astronomical had she been found guilty of the initial accusation of sharing more than 1,700 songs.
Instead of agreeing to an out of court settlement similar to more than 26,000 people who have been accused of pirating music files online, Thomas decided to fight it out in the court and ultimately losing the battle.
Thomas argument that she did not have a Kazaa account and it was someone else had used her computer to share the songs was brushed aside by the jury. Says Chris Castle, a copyright attorney and longtime music industry executive, "The answer that the court gave was 'It's your account, you're responsible. It's your screen name. You pay the bills. It's in your house. You are on the hook for it.'"
Meanwhile Thomas still has an option to appeal against the judgment and Fred von Lohmann, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation believes that she can find some reputed copyright attorneys who will be interested in taking her case.
"There are a lot of copyright lawyers who would be interested in helping her if she wants to continue this. I'd imagine that she doesn't want to pay $200,000. We'll see what she wants to do", he said.
The RIAA has settled many cases out of court and is pursuing other people thought to have illegally uploaded music on file-sharing networks.
