[Comet]

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 fine, noting that the price tag on the songs she downloaded was 99 cents.
She plans to appeal, he said.
Cara Duckworth, a spokeswoman for the Recording Industry Association of America, said the RIIA was "pleased that the jury agreed with the evidence and found the defendant liable."
"We appreciate the jury's service and that they take this as seriously as we do," she said.
Thomas-Rasset downloaded work by artists such as No Doubt, Linkin Park, Gloria Estefan and Sheryl Crow.
This was the second trial for Thomas-Rasset. The judge ordered a retrial in 2007 after there was an error in the wording of jury instructions.
The fines jumped considerably from the first trial, which granted just $220,000 to the recording companies.
Thomas-Rasset is married with four children and works for an Indian tribe in Minnesota.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06...ine/index.html

[ragingclue]

Ouch.

[darkcloud]

Stupid. The record industry will never see that money ever. And their just alienating their client base. They wouldn't make shit if it weren't for us buying it.

And 24 songs??? Give me a fucking break!

[Comet]

I hope they get what's coming to them soon
they've been at this for far too long

[jaserion]

no comments for the court system to allow such thing....

[wj4]

Originally Posted by darkcloud

Stupid. The record industry will never see that money ever. And their just alienating their client base. They wouldn't make shit if it weren't for us buying it.

And 24 songs??? Give me a fucking break!

Yep. This is only the 2nd case prosecuted too. I read it on Yahoo and they said they were willing to even settle for around $3-5,000.

And who uses site like Kazaa anymore? In the recent years with the rise of blogs and sites like Rapidshare, Zshare, etc., this made the problem a lot more probable.

And also with WiFi and 'sharing' internet service, kinda hard to trace back to you when say, you're DL'ing stuff from the local bookstore or what have you.

[darkcloud]

Originally Posted by wj4

Yep. This is only the 2nd case prosecuted too. I read it on Yahoo and they said they were willing to even settle for around $3-5,000.

And who uses site like Kazaa anymore? In the recent years with the rise of blogs and sites like Rapidshare, Zshare, etc., this made the problem a lot more probable.

And also with WiFi and 'sharing' internet service, kinda hard to trace back to you when say, you're DL'ing stuff from the local bookstore or what have you.

I use Ares, but I haven't downloaded in ages. I typically take my external hd and rip songs from friends that still download:haha:

This is just stupid though. $2 a song is reasonable, maybe even $3-5 to cover legal costs. But $80k for a song. Go fuck yourself. I'd give the American flag a big ass middle finger and move my ass to some tropical island and be a beach bumb if I were her.

[Comet]

I just get all my music from radio stations

friends of mine work there, I give them a list of music I want, they put it on my USB drive and give it to me.. either way they have massive downtime.

[Scorpion]

Heard about this this morning. Messed up on so many levels. Plus shes got like 4 kids.

[c0nstant]

thats fucking stupid, tbh

[xg3]

NAH! YOU ARE ALL WRONG!

the penalty is way low... There is no way these guys will get the 1.9 millions dollar fine... so they might as well increase it to 1.9 billions and say they will donate 1.71 billions to recessions!

[Blake]

Originally Posted by xg3

NAH! YOU ARE ALL WRONG!

the penalty is way low... There is no way these guys will get the 1.9 millions dollar fine... so they might as well increase it to 1.9 billions and say they will donate 1.71 billions to recessions!

wat

[Spool]

damn if she gets fine that much for downloading songs...how much will i get fined for downloading Blu-Ray movies?

and the porn industry will get trillions from me

[Couch]

Originally Posted by darkcloud

Stupid. The record industry will never see that money ever. And their just alienating their client base. They wouldn't make shit if it weren't for us buying it.

And 24 songs??? Give me a fucking break!

Yep, and how much of that money will the artists see? Probably none at all.

[bolinp78]

Originally Posted by darkcloud

Stupid. The record industry will never see that money ever. And their just alienating their client base. They wouldn't make shit if it weren't for us buying it.

And 24 songs??? Give me a fucking break!

Well, to be fair, she was caught sharing over 1,700 songs, but "for the sake of simplicity" they only sought proof for 24 of them.

[Ryan@Motorwerks]

Originally Posted by bolinp78

Well, to be fair, she was caught sharing over 1,700 songs, but "for the sake of simplicity" they only sought proof for 24 of them.

Still that's more than $1,000 a song...a bit steep imho. And stuff like this just encourages me even more not to pay for their music.

[MrAdams]

I've only bought 2 CDs in my life.... Free Mixtapes FTW!!

[1cleanm6]

IF this happened to me i would fart on the judges and jurys head and spit on all of them, while im cussing there generation out, and when im doing theyll be seeing my 335 running all there kids over....

[TiAg335i]

i buy all my music on iTunes.....99 cents is not gonna kill me in the long run.

[len56]

ouch. like a biotch.

[1cleanm6]

Originally Posted by TiAg335i

i buy all my music on iTunes.....99 cents is not gonna kill me in the long run.

there are people with thousands of songs.....

they should be going after the companies not the individuals...

what has this world come too?

[MrAdams]

Originally Posted by TiAg335i

i buy all my music on iTunes.....99 cents is not gonna kill me in the long run.

I have about 3,000 songs. and I would say 75% of it is not available on itunes... and in the hip hop world everyone makes free mixtapes to promote.