This is why you stop being cheapskates and buy the music you like or just listen to the radio. Singles are sold for $.99 from almost every .mp#/.wma song site and some offer specials. Too bad a 30 year old mother had to be the 'Example,' but stealing is stealing. No excuses and nothing to debate.

This is such bullshit... honestly which is gonna hurt more, the company losing out on maybe a couple thousand $, or a single mother being forced to pay $220,000 :/

To them it's nothing, to her it's her life... The punishment really does not fit the crime...

god bless America...one of dem tracks must of been by Metallica, Lars you drum like an old woman

Surely there are far more nefarious song sharers and pirates over the internet, why is it the RIAA always goes after old people and single mothers sharing a comparatively paltry amount of songs? i mean, one rationalizes that while the RIAA's goal is to make you fearful of doing it that the average person figures as long as they arent an illegal MP3 factory running 24/7 that they probably arent worth the time, and perhaps it is a successful campaign to do this to counter that, but overall it seems pointless to attack the ground level MP3 downloader for the very reason alot of people casually do it.

Well, reading up the details it appears clear that she did it. However no matter what the outcome, the RIAA will look bad no matter what.

Just read my title. It's unacceptable to do such a thing. Also it's stupid, do you think that Thomas has that amount of cash ? The only thing they did is throw a man from his home. Lame, lame, lame.

"Thomas, 30, maintained that she was not the Kazaa user "Tereastarr," whose files were detected by RIAA's investigators. Her attorney speculated to jurors that she could have been the victim of a spoof, cracker, zombie, drone and other attacks."

There's a chance Jammie Thomas might actually be innocent. I doubt a single mother of 2 is sophisticated enough to know she must use a hardware firewall, or router, to prevent most hacking attacks on her PC. In addition, she must use a software firewall. While I'm sure she used the M$ XP firewall, I doubt that's enough to prevent all attacks. A third party software firewall, such as ZoneAlarm is best. While I have been using PC's for a long time, even I don't know if these 2 precautions are enough to prevent all attacks mentioned above.

No one here has personally spoken with Jammie Thomas, so we don't know if her claims are true or not. The above story might be what her lawyer concocted. Nevertheless, her story should have been enough to raise "reasonable doubt" in the minds of the jury. The jury probably found her guilty because civil cases are easier to prove and Minnesota is notoriously conservative. I suspect this is why the RIAA decided to proceed in Minnesota. I suspect she and her lawyer will be interviewed on TV news soon. Then, we can all decide if she is innocent or not.

P.S.: This is a great reason to boycott the RIAA and stop buying all CD's.

The RIAA can never hope to see that money and this quantity of bad press is simply going to make people download illegaly on principle. Well done RIAA, that's millions of Americans who've just decided you're scum who'll never see a penny of there money again. Bravo.

Some advice from someone from the Old Continent: if you want to retain your moral leadership over the world (or better: 'try to make that claim change into something more than a laughably ridiculous mockery'), it might be a good idea to recalibrate your ideas of justice, lol.

$220.000 fine for a single mother for sharing 24 songs over the Internet. That sounds fucking Taliban, man!! Why not give her 10 whip-lashes instead?

I don't see how she can be found liable if they can't prove she downloaded the songs since they can't prove it was her account or that she even had possession of the songs. Anyone could've downloaded the songs. From her computer. It's possible to even download the songs without even being on her computer. There are other technical details she could argue to raise doubt. Unless they have a camera hidden in her house pointing at someone's computer, I don't see how the RIAA can prove any case, especially when they don't even have the hard drive with the files in question on it!

Congratulations.... music piracy goes on, but you did manage to ruin someone's life.

I really don't see how this helps their case any. It's not like everyone who has a hard drive full of songs is about to delete them now.

The Jurry could have also eaten her liver, my god leave these people Alone! There are far worse people in the world, like Spammers, and people who develop Malware... But noo, we must spend our time attacking innocent middle class citizens.

Forget the excuse that the rich record company just lost a little money, they just destroyed a family. Shame on them.

Sometimes you're screwed. Too bad.
I don't know how this verdict will stick without the hard drive though. An IP address only proves that her connection was used, nothing more. Of course her recently switched hard drive doesn't help alleviate suspicions.

It's obvious that record labels are out to make examples of a few in order to quell the actions of many. That's all they can do for now I guess, but the potential $150,000 per song is a bit excessive in my view. If that's what they charge downloaders then what do they charge uploaders or sellers?

Ok, so it appears they're not really aiming to let her pay this completely, or there are some ways around actually having to pay it. I'm inclined to believe that.

Still is a bad signal. The fine is so laughably over-the-top that feelings of injustice are much stronger than the sense of "uh-oh, maybe downloading and sharing isn't so ethical after all"

I suppose she had it coming, but a song is worth, what, $1.00? So maybe you throw in treble damages and she gets hit with $3.00 per song.

Hopefully, the appellate court will step in and review how the jury determined a song is worth over $9000, and tell this jury to shove its award up its collective ass.

As for juries, remember, OJ was tried by a jury...

hope your not serious dude, dont tell me you never downloaded a mp3 on net, this new is BS ... one chance its not illegal to dl things in canada:P

Ok so if you can buy each of those songs for 99 cents, she would need to have uploaded any song over 222 thousands times! And then which one of those people would have actually bought it.

However on a positive note, she already spent a lot of her money on the lawyer which means that they will get even less as she will surely be bankrupt. $220k for 24 songs is just ridiculous though.. None of those jurors had any common sense.

Hey Knowitall,

Thanks for the reminder of the the typical pompous and condescending attitude from the old continent. Hopefully the Taliban won't start moving west. whoops sorry guess thats already been a major problem problem over there. :) Good luck!

This is such F* BS and everybody knows it. RIAA corp and all the millionaires just want your dollar. Lets see don't go after the uploaders go after the downloaders. Because if you stop the uploading then... no MO MONEY! F U RIAA, gonna keep rippn u off. Oh Yea STFU FRAGS how bout some sensitivity for the lady you DF, prob work for the RIAA don't ya

This is scary...

With this news.. I am Definetly never gonnnaa Buy another Piece of Music ever again. I have had conversations with most of the people i know, as well as a number of customers. The feelings are very mutual. I understand the Music industry's need to protect their interests... but come on now. a Quarter of a million dollar virduct??

Greed is just the begenning. someone mentioned 1$ for a song. YET within their fine print, the song can only be played on their device (Apple).. for instance. IF you transfer the song to a CD for example and want to listen to it in your car.. you are in violation. if your IPOD gets stolen, well could that constitute a issue as well. If you download music from istore,, on your computer, and the computer is stolen, or compromised. and the music stolen, and the thief uploads the content to wherever.. they trace the media back to you,, are you responsible? is that HEAT brought to you??

Yah, i am done with that.. i can just listen to digital music from my FM radio,,, as with movies,, i dont feel the need to constantly feed a industry, that is forcing garbage on us, yet we appear to have no other choice.. F-That..

I think the ones will lose in the long run is RIAA. They might make some money now but will end up losing customers.

PLS Somebody shoot these stupid american lawyers!!!The greedy corporations refuse to realise that there will be no more bln. $$$ just like that.File sharing is unstoppable and is perfectly legal in many countries incl. EU.If a bought something I could share it with 100000000 people if I want,and they can do the same,no legal mumbo-jumbo can stop it.I wonder why all the artists complain about mp3 and not complain about taking up to 10% from the record company?!?!Music should be free - if you are good artist make concerts and earn money!This will stop some f**ing one day gay bands making money out of nothing,man 80% of the new "artist" cannot sing and make music (60$ album anyone),they are just so fake!This will stop only if companies make up to 0.30$ per song, that's the most I can afford to buy a song,sorry!!!

MPAA of course sets the court date to the judge of their choice. If they can't, they extend the court date till they get him. They scratch his back, judge will scratch theirs.

really and truly look at it this way in all things there is only one original all the rest are copies,So companies that make music,software and dvd's are pirates too,because they are also duplicating and that's the truth.Remember folks there is always only one original.

How come if I hack my neighbors wireless I can go to jail. But if the RIAA gets onto my computer and scans its files I go to jail. How is this not invasion of privacy? I would appeal this. She should have blamed the RIAA for tampering with the security of her computer, and thus forced her to destroy that hard drive.

She may never had been caught had she used an IP filter. Of course, it isn't wise to leave highly popular songs shared on your machine for weeks on end.

Protowall and Blocklist manager both are found at the Bluetack website. If your not familiar with how it works, you should check out the site to learn more.

Keep in mind that as she is the first to go down she is likely the first they charged. Meaning that this dates back several years (I've no proof but it sounds likely).
How many of you changed hard disks in the last 4 years because they malfunctioned?

Back then there weren't even any legally downloadable mp3s. iTunes didn't exist. Napster was likely only just squashed.

As she had thousands (so they claim) of mp3s shared it likely was deliberate. But they have no way of proving she actually had those files on her computer without the hard drive, or a cd backup collection perhaps.

They never said how long she was sharing the files for either. Perhaps one visitor exploited her connection (we'll assume broadband) and took the files with him a few hours later?

What exactly are these legal professionals trained in?

It seems that, in order to find this information, the RIAA has to commit some illegal acts itself, such as the breaching of privacy.

Just a thought.

This is outrageous how RIAA has seemingly convinced lawmakers and now a jury that filesharing is some sort of new means of copyright infringement. People, long before the internet we used to just record songs on reel to reel tape recorders right from the radio. After that we used cassette recorders to do the same then along came cable radio and we got whole albums at a time.

How can you claim copyright infringement when you are already giving the songs away for free over the radio?

It is time to wake up America before this becomes a complete police state.

Yes why is it that we don't see spammers hauled in? Because the US government is now acting as the private police for major corporations. They don't have time to enforce CRIMINAL law.

What a joke. Really, someone calculated that this will cost her 25% of her income for life. Why stay in the US? Not like it's necessarily a better place to live anyway. Find a nice job elsewhere. They can't attach her salary outside the US.

That woman was singled out. There are 10's of millions of people in the States who have file shared copyrighted information. How is it fair just to penalize a few? Ridiculously penalize IMO. In a reasonable society really intent on deterrent I can see MAYBE a $500 fine and probation. $2 Million for jaywalking next?

Anyone else notice the bit about one of the potential jurors having to recuse themselves because they confessed to having done file shard as well?

I do feel bad for this women, it's not really about $220,000 they just made a scape goat out of her, with all the cd sales down, RIAA are so desparate they are going after the easy targets, I'm sure they would push for death penalty if they could.

I read somewhere that the jury was nothing more than a panel of "musicians". They were hand picked by the prosecution and if I were the defendant, I would want to investigate the histories of these jurors and just how much the RIAA paid them.

What's really disturbing about this is that apparently now an IP address can be used to uniquely identify you.

This is why I hate law and lawyers and the entire justice system. Something that is dynamically assigned at the wave of a hat has been deemed enough to prove you did something. I say hackers unite, start spoofing and pinning horrible cyber crimes on the RIAA lawyers.

It is only matter of time as people with iPODS will be stopped and ordered to show receipt for every song they have.

Have you people realized as penetrating into personal computers without judge approved search warrant is a sign of diminished freedoms and democracy?

But the same time porno-industry defending their ads pages on “public internet” as “freedom of speech”, and I have no chance to protect my kid from seeing it.

If you are looking for crime in this case then search it in big labels, who take MOST money in music distribution business. Performing Artists do benefit if more people listen their songs, even for free. That is the way how radios, web-based “try before buy” operate.

A few points that haven't been addressed:

1) I don't know about her ISP, but most high-speed I've seen uses dynamic IP Addresses (which is how they claim to have tracked her) - If she turns her computer off at night, her IP address is likely to change every time she fires it up...
2) Kazaa downloaders are also uploaders, so technically, the IP Address affected _was_ an uploader
3) Did anybody ask her kids if they installed Kazaa on the computer?? If it was a kid, are _they_ then liable? Should they be sued for 150,00k per song??

My 0.02

Once upon a time, a music label was a needed. Labels were able to market and bring your music to the masses, and this was a service that had value.

In today's technological climate, a music label is not needed. Musicians can market themselves, over the web.

We need a new model for this business. Piracy isnt going to stop, it's as simple as that. I dont care how many people they take to court, we are going to share our music.

Studio recordings should, therefore, be marketing tools, and free for all. Performances should cost three times what they do... and without a label to support (they make like 90% of the money) the musicians will do just fine.

I bet it takes a couple hundred years for this to occur, and it would REQUIRE us, as consumers, to simply stop supporting the current system.

Remember... capitalism is really a form of democracy, and each dollar spent could be considered a vote.

I refuse to support any model that has us paying for recordings. We don't need the labels anymore, and neither do the artists.

P.S. I've been a musician since I was age 6, so please dont go there.

If it's legal to record songs from the radio, then I don't see why it's illegal to download songs? I don't accept the argument that "it's stealing." It's not the same as stealing a CD from the store. A CD has real manufacturing costs that go into the company projecting how many CDs it will sell. That has a real monetary value that you can calculate. With an mp3, you can't magically predict how many potential sales you've lost. Just because someone downloads a song doesn't mean you lost money. I've made this same argument with software and movies. If someone values something enough, then they'll pay for it, but if they never intended on buying something to begin with, then you're not losing any money, and since it's a digital download, nothing is being lost except bandwidth. And I don't see how recording a song from the radio or a movie on tv is legal, but downloading a song or movie isn't. You give up the same benefits you get from buying a retail copy in exchange for poorer quality. An mp3 isn't the same as a CD track and doesn't sound the same. Look no further than the insane ringtone restrictions to see it's a load of BS. The unreasonable and greedy digital copyright laws need to be changed. The RIAA tries to skew numbers to make it seem like music downloads are hurting sales and making them lose all kinds of money when in reality sales are down because music isn't as good as it used to be. 90% of new bands suck and the 10% that have actual talent are bands or musicians that are just not something I'd listen to. Plus, take into consideration the decline of music channels like MTV and VH1 that don't expose music the way they used to and have pretty much become faux-reality show channels targeted at 14 year olds. The only time I ever see music on those channels is at like 4 AM.

I used to buy cd's but whats the point with greedy corporations doing this to people.

Do they think she has quarter of a million dollars?

"Minnesota is notoriously conservative. I suspect this is why the RIAA decided to proceed in Minnesota."

One thing that you can't really say about Minnesota is that it is "notoriously conservative". The state hasn't voted conservative for president in forever. We are a blue state(one of the few in middle america) and have been for a long time. Yes we have a republican governor but if you look at the state house and senate you will see about 65% dems and the state supreme court is around that number too. Oh yeah and "notoriously conservative" don't vote Jesse Ventura governor either so.

The 220000 is going to the lawyers...

Im waiting for a lawsuit... Im waiting for someone to sue the music industry.

For what, you ask?

For forcing anyone without a computer to buy an entire album of music, while making the purchase of single songs available to us all that have a computer.

Isnt that discriminating against lower income families? They have to pay a higher price for the same thing.

Stop talking out of your a$$ knowitall. It was in Europe that a 9 year old got sued for thousands of euros for posting a video of his teacher singing karaoke. This woman was sued for an actual crime. The amount of money is ridiculous, but it's still a crime.

If her hard disk drive had not suddenly gone bad and been thrown away when the court asked for it, she could have proved her innocence.

Pirating music is stupid and stupidity should hurt.

If this works, if the RIAA wins, we may finally see the end of DRM, THe end of the Record labels, the end of the whole fucking music establishment.

Think about it:
If you illegally share your songs, you get sued by the RIAA - no more cheap ass settlements, The full $10000 per song you share (per share of the song - even better). Poeple will finally stop their idiot "robin hood" mentality and get with the program.
This means there is no more need for DRM - removing the DRM from i-tunes and such, will create a walhalla for real music lovers (not for seedy, stick your thumb in the systems asshole, hackers/robinhoods) - $0.99 (or less) for an high quality mp3 which is truely yours to have and enjoy anywhere - home, mp3-player, car.

This will allow new bands to start offering their music through these music sites, allowing for an unlimited potential fanbase for this raw talent. Throw in a radio site like pandora and such, where you can input your preferences, and they throw in music thats alike what you like - and the true glorius future is finally here:

You hear a song on internet radio (also availiable through cable, wifi) and you like it. You decide you want to buy it and press the button (say the code word - make the control movement) and the number is automatically downloaded (and payed for) by your computer. You then own this number and can put it on an usb-stick, burn a cd. You won't upload it, because the RIAA will sue your ass, but you can take your cd to your friends and let them hear it. Rather than take the trouble of ripping it, you just buy it (for $0.99 or less per song - I'll have my own). No DRM, no Hassle, great music for little money, all the oppertunities for new talent.

Glorius future

BTW, if you really think this woman shouldn't be forced to pay the price, put your money where your mouth is, and send her an dollar for each song you've uploaded - she should be a millionaire in minutes

I would start a charity to pay for my fee. And by doing so I would have a .99 cent downloadable song on my website called "F**k the RIAA" with some choice words to the RIAA. It would be a billboard #1.

RIAA should go for China's based pirating industry, which makes CD and DVD copies in millions and for profit. But they are "Chicken" in that case, because China very aggressively defends their folks from being prosecuted.

Based on RIAA point of view ALL US residents with computers and other recording devices are potential criminals, and they need to punish some of them to keep dying business sound.

How many downloaded songs make people criminals? One, ten, 1000000???? What should be a quality of downloaded song? AM radio/FM radio? 16 bit? What bout public libraries with plenty of DVDs/CDs? Who can be searched to find infringement and which way can be legally used? Asking kazaa for list of loggings and IP? Hiring detectives? Approving search warrant in court? Can people sell HDD with legal music files on it to others? Can be other mp3 players synchronized with legal songs on my PC?

Morale of this story is: don't steal from rich guys. When rich guys steal from poor folks they call it business.

If you had people steal half your paycheck every time, would you just want them to give it back paycheck after paycheck after paycheck or would you want to press charges with jail time to get them to stop?

If someone opened 24 of your bank vaults to the public, would you hold them responsible for opening the vualt only, or would you also hold them resposisble for all the money that was stolen?

Apparently, there are very few people that understand how a legal system works. This was a civil case. There was no fine. A fine goes to the government for a criminal violation. There was a civil judgement, and that goes to the plaintiff (RIAA and their Attorneys). It's unlikely they will be able to get their money (blood, turnip).

Some people said stuff like singling out. Well, you start with the easiest case you have to win. That's how you establish legal precendent. Doesn't mean it's the only person/organization they will go after. This means you. You know who I'm talking about.

Then there's the goofball who talks about the manufacturers violating copyright for manufacturing the CDs. Apparently doesn't understand the concept of contractual license. It also applies to radio. AND, you can LEGALLY record ANYTHING that is broadcast over the airwaves. However, you cannot redistribute what you have recorded. It it for your own personal use.

Recording off the internet does not afford the same protections as off the airwaves. There are technical and legal reasons, but mostly because recording off the airwaves is never at the original quality, while there is no loss of quality in digital. So protection is provided to the copyright owners.

One of the most unbelievable rumor mongers was the one that proposed a stacked jury of musicians. I gave up reading after that on. There is a jury picking process, and all juries are selected by attorneys for both sides. The defendants attorney has equal right and access to choosing who is on the jury, so there is no possibility of this happening unless the defendants attorney just sits there with his/her thumb up his/her bumb. It is even more unlikely because the available jury pool is selected randomly from the local community. I hardly think Minnesota is a real hotbed of RIAA musicians.

ONLINE PIRACY - provide the URL of, or link to, the site or service you believe is engaging in music piracy. If the site or service does not have a URL, requires software to access, operates on a local area network (LAN) or has specific operation requirements, please provide information sufficient for us to investigate. You may also include names of individuals or other entities associated with the site or service, if known.

Now this seems to me like they are breaking the law themselves. My two cents.