So MacWorld reports that ‘a U.S. jury found her guilty of copyright infringement and fined her a total of $222,000’.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota could have fined Jammie Thomas as much as $3.6 million, but opted not to. The mother of two was found guilty of stealing and giving away via Internet peer-to-peer Internet file-sharing service Kazaa a total of 24 songs from companies including Capitol Records, Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner Bros. Records.
– Macworld Oct. 5, 2007
Did you see the important part? It was only 24 songs!!! Ouch! I assumed it was thousands of songs when I saw the fine…
I’d really like to comment that all of that is pretty harsh. But she was breaking the law so I guess there isn’t much to say. Actually, I will make a comment, file-sharing is bad, but she’d have to share an awful lot for the record companies to lose that much money. Although, 24 songs is probably what they specifically proved, she may have done thousands of others that they just didn’t have the details on (but that would probably be inadmissible too). How would you even pay a fine like that?
Here’s the direct link.
Update: Turns out there were 1,700-ish songs, they just focused on a smaller amount for the case. Scott (over at Dean’s World) has some more info and a few more links.
