Woman sued $1.9 million for downloading for 24 songs

[Dasquian Belargic]

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/18/minnesota.music.download.fine/index.html?eref=rss_topstories


A federal jury Thursday found a 32-year-old Minnesota woman guilty of illegally downloading music from the Internet and fined her $80,000 each -- a total of $1.9 million -- for 24 songs.

Illegal downloads of musical files will cost a Minnesota woman $1.9 million, a jury has decided.

Jammie Thomas-Rasset's case was the first such copyright infringement case to go to trial in the United States, her attorney said.

Attorney Joe Sibley said that his client was shocked at the fine, noting that the price tag on the songs she downloaded was 99 cents.

She plans to appeal, he said.

Blimey... how ridiculous. Here's a list of the songs that cost her so much:

* Guns N Roses "Welcome to the Jungle"; "November Rain"
* Vanessa Williams "Save the Best for Last"
* Janet Jackson "Let’s What Awhile"
* Gloria Estefan "Here We Are"; "Coming Out of the Heart"; "Rhythm is Gonna Get You"
* Goo Goo Dolls "Iris"
* Journey "Faithfully"; "Don’t Stop Believing"
* Sara McLachlan "Possession"; "Building a Mystery"
* Aerosmith "Cryin’"
* Linkin Park "One Step Closer"
* Def Leppard "Pour Some Sugar on Me"
* Reba McEntire "One Honest Heart"
* Bryan Adams "Somebody"
* No Doubt "Bathwater"; "Hella Good"; "Different People"
* Sheryl Crow "Run Baby Run"
* Richard Marx "Now and Forever"
* Destiny’s Child "Bills, Bills, Bills" (:ohno)
* Green Day "Basket Case"

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

Being sued for that amount of money is daunting, but ultimately I don't feel that it legitimately scares a person. If the fines were much more reasonable, say, 500 bucks per song, then yes there would be an end in sight to garnished wages or however they collect, but it would be a long and frustrating road.

Course, I also think the RIAA is a company of complete douchenozzles, so there.

[Captain Untouchable]

I'm sorry... how the hell do they justify that? The main argument against piracy is that it deprives the music industry of money that is rightfully theirs. How the hell can they justify the industries getting more money for each 99 cent song than most people would get in compensation if they were run over?!

[Karl Valten]

I kinda want to move back to Wisconsin now.

[Yog]

Funny thing is, none of these songs were ever found on her harddisk, just connection details through her ISP. And they apparently never proved she was sharing any of these songs, let alone attempted to calculate loss in record sales due to her downloads. I'm guessing the real loss is close to 0$, and that $1.9M figure is just an arbitrary number.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

Thing about the harddrive deal from what I've read, is that she scrapped her old one, dropped in a new HD, and said it'd been in the machine since '04. Only problem with that though was that the manufacturing date on the HD was '05.

Both parties in this whole thing are nuts; the RIAA for obvious reasons, and her for lying under oath.

[Dasquian Belargic]

Even if she did lie about the whole hard-drive issue, how anyone can justify 80-grand for one song is amazing to me. If she had been like.. the ring-leader of a file-sharing community, who they had identified as having seeded hundreds of albums, fair enough. But even then! This is a ludicrous sum of money.

[Charley]

How is that sort of financial levy against a common person not cruel and unusual punishment? That effectively destroys a person's life.

[Dasquian Belargic]

What do you think they will expect from her? That every month part of her wages goes to the RIAA? ...in which case she'd be dead before she ever paid it off... so presumably the debt is passed on to any heirs and then for generations and generations her family will pay part of their monthly pay to the RIAA until hundreds of years in the future they have finally earned the right to listen to Welcome to the Jungle?

[Xavier Synik]

They think this kind of judgement will scare people into using iTunes or similar they're nuts.

I haven't read the story, but my only question is whether that number includes her having to pay the legal fees for the RIAA since they do that a lot. If that is the case I could totally see the fine amout being $1 since I doubt the RIAA lawyers are cheap.

[Mu Satach]

I think they hope the fine will be used as a deterrent for others. Hopefully it can get negotiated down to something more reasonable through the appeals process.