Record Companies Win Latest Round In War Over Illegal Downloading
Posted October 5, 2007 12:00 pm.
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She took on the recording industry and lost, and now a single mom living paycheque to paycheque owes $222,000.
That’s the whopping amount 30-year-old Jammie Thomas was ordered to pay the six record companies that sued her $9250 for each of the 24 copyrighted songs they claimed she illegally downloaded and shared. She was accused of sharing 1,702 songs in total.
“This does send a message, I hope, that downloading and distributing our recordings is not OK,” said music company lawyer Richard Gabriel following the three-day civil trial in Duluth, Minnesota.
It’s the first time the industry and an individual downloader have faced off in a trial – past defendants have settled with the companies, usually for a few thousand dollars. But Thomas maintained her innocence throughout.
“She was in tears. She’s devastated,” explained her attorney, Brian Toder. “This is a girl that lives from paycheque to paycheque, and now all of a sudden she could get a quarter of her paycheque garnished for the rest of her life.”
There’s no word on how the music companies will go about collecting the money from Thomas. In the case she was accused of sharing the illegally downloaded songs via Kazaa.
There have been approximately 26,000 music file-sharing lawsuits since 2003. Record companies complain the practice has hurt sales because it allows fans to get their music for free instead of paying for recordings.
Copyright law damages range from $750 to $30,000 per infringement, and can carry a penalty of $150,000 if it’s proved the violator knew what they were doing was wrong. Thomas’s infringement was deemed by jurors to be willful, which is likely the reason for the large amount she now owes.
Record companies involved in the case against Thomas were Sony BMG, Arista Records LLC, Interscope Records, UMG Recording Inc., Capitol Records Inc. and Warner Bros Records Inc.
