US woman ordered to pay 1.92 mln dlrs in music piracy case

0 Comments | AFP, June, 2009

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota (AFP) — A US jury on Thursday ordered a 32-year-old woman to pay 1.92 million dollars in damages for illegally downloading 24 songs in a high-profile digital piracy case.

Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a single mother of four from the US state of Minnesota, was found liable for using the Kazaa peer-to-peer file-sharing network to download the songs over the Internet.

The jury took just under five hours to reach its verdict.

It ordered Thomas-Rasset to pay 1.92 million dollars -- or 80,000 dollars per song -- to six record companies: Capitol Records, Sony BMG Music, Arista Records, Interscope Records, Warner Bros. Records and UMG Recordings.

Thomas-Rasset had been convicted previously, in October 2007, and ordered to pay 220,000 dollars in...