Mom hit with 222G fine for downloading, sharing music

A jury ordered a Minnesota mom who shared rock and pop tunes over the Internet to pay $222,000 to six record labels in a first-of-its-kind ruling yesterday.

The woman could have gotten off with a fine of less than $10,000 and a wrist slap if she had just settled, as hundreds of others have, but Jammie Thomas, 30, opted to go to court.

She's surely listening to Connie Francis' "Who's Sorry Now?" today.

The jury ordered Thomas to pay the six record companies that sued her $9,250 for each of 24 songs they focused on in the case. They had alleged she shared 1,702 songs online in violation of their copyrights.

"This does send a message, I hope, that downloading and distributing our recordings is not okay," said Richard Gabriel, the lead attorney for the music companies.

In the first such lawsuit to go to trial, the companies accused Thomas of downloading the songs and offering them online through a Kazaa file-sharing account. Thomas denied wrongdoing and testified that she did not have a Kazaa account.

Record companies have filed more than 26,000 lawsuits since 2003 over file-sharing, which has hurt sales because it allows people to get music for free. Many defendants have settled by paying the companies a few thousand dollars.

Thomas and her attorney Brian Toder declined to comment.

Friday, October 5th 2007, 4:00 AM
DULUTH, Minn. –

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Do you think that this woman should be made to pay over $200,000 in fines?

Sharing music over the Internet hurts sales for not only the record companies, but the artists themselves. Do you think that it is fair for people to download the music for free?

When people share their cds with others to burn new ones or use them to download on their ipods or mp3 players, is that fair? What is the difference?
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FKGL 10.2