Fined $US220,000 for sharing 24 songs

I read in the papers last week that Jammie Thomas from Minnesota got fined US$220,000 for having 24 songs on Kazaa! I have no idea how they came up with that figure but apparently, it could have been as much as US$150,000 for each song! It’s pretty obvious that she’s just being made an example of. I bet she’s probably loaded and they know that she can afford to pay a couple hundred grand. Why else would they have pursued this? Surely this would have been a much more publicised event had she been a single mum on welfare payments.

What I find intriguing is how on earth did they prove that it was her. All you can really do is track it down to an IP and even if they can link your pc to that ip at that point in time, anyone could have been using it. Just by connecting to the Kazaa network, you automatically share your songs - that’s the default setting - so how did they manage to prove that she willingly uploaded the songs? From the sounds of things, I think she wasn’t rich enough to hire a better lawyer.

As for myself, I’ve stopped all this dodgy stuff long ago. It was all good and fun whilst I was at uni but nowadays, if I can’t afford it, I won’t download it.

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