The recording industry has won a major fight in its effort to stop illegal music downloading with a US jury decision to impose $222,000 (€157,000) damages against a Minnesota woman who used a web service to share music.
Although industry commentators are divided over what impact the case will have on stemming illegal downloads globally, the size of the damages is significant - almost 80 times higher than the average European settlement figure in such a case.
The jury in the civil case in the US district court of Minnesota found Jammie Thomas infringed copyrighted song recordings, and awarded damages of $9,250 for each of the 24 recordings cited.
The verdict marked the first jury trial in the US industry's drive to combat piracy with lawsuits against an individual.
According to court documents, the record companies sued Thomas in April 2006 after 1,702 music files involving artists such as Green Day and Aerosmith were traced to a computer tied to her. A year earlier, investigators had located an individual with the screen name "tereastarr@KaZaA" using the Kazaa filesharing software program.
Thomas, in documents, denied the allegations of the complaint "that relate to any allegations that she ever used any [ peer-to-peer] network, including Kazaa".
The record companies involved included EMI's Capitol Records, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Arista Records, Interscope Records, Warner Bros Records and UMG Recordings.
According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which represents the recording industry, there have been 50,000 cases in 18 countries against illegal filesharers, with settlements averaging just over €2,000.
Figures from ScreenDigest show that physical music revenues in the US have fallen from about €15.3 billion in 2001 to €4.1 billion last year.
"Legal action against an individual is all about setting examples and that is why there is such a ridiculously high rate [ of damages] set in this case," said Mark Mulligan of Jupiter Research. - (Reuters)
