Jammie Thomas, 30, a single mother from Brainerd of Minnesota, was ordered to pay $222,000 by a federal court in Duluth for offering to share 24 specific songs online - a cost of $9,250 per song. Jammie Thomas was alleged of sharing 1,702 songs in all.
It was the first time one of the industry's lawsuits against individual downloaders had gone to trial. The recording industry hopes $222,000 will be enough to dissuade music lovers from downloading songs from the Internet without paying for them.
"This does send a message, I hope, that downloading and distributing our recordings is not OK," Richard Gabriel, the lead attorney for the music companies consisting of Sony BMG, Arista Records LLC, Interscope Records, UMG Recordings Inc., Capitol Records Inc. and Warner Bros. Records Inc..
Source: Record Companies Win Music Sharing Trial @ AP
Huge fine for US music downloader @ BBC