RIAA Wins File Sharing Case

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has won a significant court case involving a woman from Minnesota who allegedly shared copyrighted material via a peer-to-peer network. This is the first case of file sharing that has been in a U.S court and signifies a landmark victory for the recording industry. Jammie Thomas, 30, was found guilty by a Minnesota jury of copyright infringement by illegally sharing music and was ordered to pay $222,000 in damages ($9,250 a song).

Thomas was found guilty of illegally sharing 24 songs on the Kazaa file sharing network under the username of tereastarr@KaZaA. The single mother of two denied at first that she was connected with the Kazaa account but later made it known via her myspace blog and a youtube video that she was in fact the account holder.

This case highlights that file sharing can be a very risky thing to do unless you know for sure that the files on your hard drive are not copyrighted. The lesson to be learned is that it is far safer (and cheaper) to buy your music legally from the many digital music services that are on the Internet; you can typically download a song for 99 cents or less which is in sharp contrast to being sued over $9,000 for an illegal copy.

For further information on file sharing, why not read this article.