Single mother Jammie Thomas fined $220,000 for music file sharing

[Sylph]

Single mother Jammie Thomas fined $220,000 for music file sharing

A single mother who took a stand against America’s biggest record companies over music piracy was fined $220,000 (£108,000) yesterday.

Jammie Thomas, a Native American from Minnesota, is one of 26,000 people whom the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has sued over the past four years for alleged use of music “file-sharing” software.

The 30-year-old made legal history after refusing to pay an out-of-court settlement, as all others challenged over their behaviour before her had done, but her failure to carry the case is likely further to embolden the music industry in its attempts to protect copyright.

A federal jury sitting in Duluth, Minnesota, ordered Ms Thomas, who has two children aged 11 and 13, to pay the six record companies that sued her $9,250 for each of 24 songs they focused on in the case.

The sum is equivalent to about five times her annual salary.

The fine will almost certainly go uncollected and is expected to drive Ms Thomas into bankruptcy.

The record companies alleged that she had shared 1,702 songs in all.

These songs included tracks by the Swedish “death metal” band Opeth, although tracks by Janet Jackson, Green Day, Guns ’N’ Roses, Journey, Destiny’s Child and others are believed to have been at issue in the case.

The companies accused her of offering the songs online through a Kazaa file-sharing account.

During the three-day trial, she denied having a Kazaa account but the 12-strong jury agreed unanimously that she had shared the files using 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 Ms Thomas.

Last year Kazaa settled its own music piracy lawsuit with record companies for $100 million. In the UK the music industry has taken legal action against more than 100 individuals, although none of those cases has yet been contested in court.

Ms Thomas lives in the small northern town of Brainerd, Minnesota, and works for the Department of Natural Resources of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, a Native American tribe.

According to the tribe’s website, its members “struggled with poverty and despair” until the opening of two casinos in the 1990s.

The case had threatened to become another PR disaster for record companies. After they were initially accused of refusing to offer a legitimate alternative to file-sharing, the companies are now being attacked for the way they price their music.

Their practices have prompted an investigation by the European Commission and alienated many big-selling bands.

Next week Radiohead will release its new album independently and allow fans to decide how to much to pay for it online, through an “honesty box” system.

Critics argue that US law allows excessive punishment for copyright infringement, with the jurors in Ms Thomas’s case able to demand fines of between $18,000 and $3.9 million. After two days of testimony it took them five hours to settle on the final amount.

Brian Toder, for Ms Thomas, had argued that the record companies had not managed to prove that “Jammie Thomas, a human being, got on her keyboard and sent out these”.

The verdict will arguably make it easier for the RIAA to win trials because it set two precedents: first, that it does not have prove that a defendant’s computer had a file-sharing programme installed when the infringement was detected; and second, that the defendant was at the keyboard when the infringements took place.

The judge also ruled that the jury could reach a guilty verdict simply if they decided that Ms Thomas had shared the files on her computer, regardless of whether anyone else had downloaded them.

Richard Gabriel, the lead prosecutor for the six record companies that sued Ms Thomas, told the jurors in his closing statement that “the need for deterrence here is great”.

According to BigChampagne, an online music research company, the number of users of file-sharing services has tripled to an estimated 9 million since the RIAA lawsuit campaign began.

Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA, which co-ordinates the lawsuits, said after the verdict: “We think we’re in for a long haul in terms of establishing that music has value, that music is property, and that property has to be respected.”

The record companies involved in the lawsuit were Sony BMG, Arista Records, Interscope Records, UMG Recordings, Capitol Records and Warner Bros Records.

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10%: proportion of music sales worldwide that come from internet downloads

10,000: people in 18 countries threatened with legal action

20bn: tracks are illegally downloaded each year

14%: of broadband users regularly engage in illegal file sharing

795m: estimated number of legal downloads bought last year

4m: songs can currently be purchased online

£1bn: what legal music download market is worth

25: illegal downloads for every legitimate music purchase

Sources: IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry); Times archives

[JackPeyton]

her being a single mother has nothing to do with it.

she broke the law and was punished, as she should be.

hello, itunes. its 1 buck a song. if u cant afford it than u dont need the music, IMO.

i hate people ripping off the entertainment biz.

[Sylph]

I quoted the title also, I didn't add the single mother thing. The problem is - there are millions of others who do the same and they got away with it, she didn't.

I also think that people in the music business illegally download music, probably more than anyone else.

[JackPeyton]

okay, well alot of people break laws, but some get caught. you take the risk, you deserve what you got.

i didnt mean to attack you with the single mother thing, i just met it in gerneral. i could tell it was in the article and u didnt add it.

[Sylph]

Unfortunately, nothing to add, but this could be a matter of serious discussion.

It's OK.