A 30-year-old Duluth, Minn., woman must pay six record companies $222,000 for violating copyright by downloading songs illegally and then sharing them through Kazaa, a federal jury has ruled in the first such lawsuit to go to trial.
The AP says Jammie Thomas, a single mother of two children, must pay each company $9,250 for each of 24 shared songs. The companies — Sony BMG, Arista Records LLC, Interscope Records, UMG Recordings Inc., Capitol Records Inc. and Warner Bros. Records Inc. — had alleged she shared a total of 1,702 songs. Thomas testified she did not have a Kazaa account, which allows peer-to-peer sharing.
Wired points out that the jury could have awarded damages of between $180,000 and $3.6 million.
Thomas and her attorney declined comment.
Record companies have filed some 26,000 file-sharing lawsuits since 2003. Today's verdict is a major victory for the music industry, which has seen its profits eroded by piracy.
(Photo of Jammie Thomas leaving court with her lawyer by Julia Cheng, AP)
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Thomas to appeal RIAA's $222,000 file-sharing verdict
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071008-thomas-to-appeal-riaas-222000-file-sharing-verdict.html
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