19 June 2009 | Author: O. Gaywood Media Optimiser

American woman fined $1.92m for file sharing

Jammie Thomas-Rasset has been found guilty of wilfully violating copyright for the second time and has been ordered to pay $1.92milllion.

A federal jury found the American woman guilty of violating music copyright on 24 songs and she has been charged $80,000 for each one. Federal law allows for a fine of up to $150,000 per song.

In 2007 Thomas-Rasset was found guilty of the same crime and fined $220,000 only for a new trial to be ordered after the judge decided he had erred in giving jury instructions. After the case Thomas-Rasset described the fine as "kind of ridiculous".

The 32-year-old mother of four said: "There's no way they're ever going to get that. I'm a mom, limited means, so I'm not going to worry about it now."

The Recording Industry Association of America says they offered Thomas-Rasset the chance to settle out of court for between $3000 and $5000. The record industry stopped filing such lawsuits last August - and instead is now working with ISPs to find the biggest offenders - and this is one of 30,000 that made it to trial. The vast majority of people settled for about $3500.

Thomas-Rasset - who tried to fob the blame on to her children and ex-husband during the trial - was initially accused of offering more than 1700 songs on Kazaa but for simplicity's sake the prosecution only had to prove 24 instances of copyright violation.

The companies involved in the court case are subsidiaries of all four major recording companies, Warner Music Group Corp., Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group, EMI Group PLC and Sony Corp.'s Sony Music Entertainment.

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