duluth, minn. The recording industry won a key fight Thursday against illegal music downloading when a federal jury found a Minnesota woman shared copyrighted music online and levied $220,000 in damages against her.
The jury ordered Jammie Thomas, 30, to pay the six record companies that sued her $9,250 for each of 24 songs they focused on in the case. They had alleged she shared 1,702 songs in all.
Thomas and her attorney, Brian Toder, declined to comment as they left the courthouse.
In the first such lawsuit to go to trial, the record companies accused Thomas of downloading the songs without permission and offering them online through a Kazaa file-sharing account. Thomas denied wrongdoing and testified that she didn’t have a Kazaa account.
Record companies have filed 26,000 lawsuits since 2003 over file-sharing, which they contend has hurt sales because it allows people to get music for free instead of paying for recordings in stores. Many other defendants have settled by paying the companies a few thousand dollars.
During the three-day trial, the record companies presented evidence they said showed the copyrighted songs were offered by a Kazaa user under the name “tereastarr.”
Their witnesses, including officials from an Internet provider and a security firm, testified that the Internet address used by “tereastarr” belonged to Thomas.
Copyright law sets a damage range of $750 to $30,000 per infringement, or up to $150,000 if the violation was “willful.” Jurors ruled that Thomas’ infringement was willful but awarded damages in a middle range.
