You’ve all heard the news by now. Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a 32-year-old woman from Brainerd, Minnesota was found guilty of downloading music illegally on peer to peer networks. The court fined her a crazy amount of $80,000 per song she downloaded. Summing that all up, her total fine is a ginormous $1.9m! I don’t think that anyone (unless you’re Bill Gates) will have that kind of money, do you?

Thomas-Rasset holds the distinction of being the only person charged with file-sharing issues to go to court. There have been others who have been charged, of course, but most of them settled before the case could be heard. In Thomas-Rasset’s case, she was tried in 2007 and fined a lower amount. Following the result of that initial trial, the defendant wrote a brief that was able to persuade the judge to hold a re-trial. The point was something about the jury not being given the right instructions. Unfortunately for the defendant, the second trial ended worse than the first one; much worse; about a million times worse.

Obviously, there is something not quite right here. She may have been guilty of downloading songs illegally, but is (almost) $2m the right amount that she should pay? Heck, each of the songs she downloaded probably costs about a dollar on iTunes!

Perhaps the jury is trying to make a point here. After all, it was not the judge nor the music industry that requested for the amount. It was all in the jury’s hands. Maybe Thomas-Rasset pissed them off.

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Categories: Music, Site News