Woman illegally downloads 24 songs, fined to tune of $1.9 million

Friday, June 19, 2009

A federal jury Thursday found a 32-year-old Minnesota woman guilty of illegally downloading music from the Internet and fined her $80,000 each -- a total of $1.9 million -- for 24 songs.

Jammie Thomas-Rasset's case was the first such copyright infringement case to go to trial in the United States, her attorney said.

Thomas-Rasset downloaded work by artists such as No Doubt, Linkin Park, Gloria Estefan and Sheryl Crow.
Link
Follow Blame it on the Voices on Twitter | Blame it on the Voices on Facebook

If you liked this post, you can subscribe to the Blame It On The Voices RSS feed and get your regular fix


16 comentarii:

Unknown said...

What have they really accomplished with this? they will never collect. there is a related post at http://iamsoannoyed.com/?p=1845

Mark! said...

The record companies are so backward in their tactics. Do they think this will have any affect on the number of downloads? Do they think this woman will actually be able to pay?

The anonymity of the Internet gives us mob mentality, They'll never be able to get us all. Which is TRUE, they can't prosecute even 1% of the downloaders. So why stop now?

What they should do is give us an easier, cheaper alternative. But instead they like grandstanding and lobbying for new restrictive laws.

rant over.

Anonymous said...

Screw that lady. I was laid off by a record company due to declining profits--a direct result of lost revenue from illegal downloading. It's not just superstar artists that lose when people illegally download, it's the hundreds of people at the record label that work in marketing, sales, radio, publicity and office support staff. People that make less than $60,000 a year, people with families and 4 kids just like this lady. She should have settled when she had the chance, screw her. I used to have an office, a 401K, health insurance etc. Now I have an unemployment check, me and about 2000 other former employees of the record company I worked for.
Unless you personally discovered a recording artist at a local bar/venue there is a good chance myself or a former co-worker had something to do with your being turned on to an artist you read about, heard on the radio, via a website etc. All art is for profit, if it wasn't you could borrow a Van Gogh from the museum for the weekend. It's just sharing right?

Anonymous said...

Perhaps the answer is we pirate our music now and send what we would have paid to Jammie. Civil disobedience most certainly has its place and this may just be it!

I don't care if she downloaded these files knowing full well that it was illegal. There is no way that she knew 24 music files would cost her 1.9 Mil...and it's not like it will.

The music industry seriously wants to force people into bankruptcy and take everything they have? Outrageous!!!! I'm steaming mad about this!

Anonymous said...

I am utterly disgusted with this. The multi-million dollar record executives are "pleased" with the outcome. How smug... How dare they make an example out of this woman. Try ADAPTING to modern music culture and finding a way to market your music in the 21st century.

Anna said...

This story is outrageous. This women has kids! The big shot rich record producers are "pleased" that they get to take her kids' food and shelter money and give it to millionaire recording artists so they don't have to forego their daily champagne, caviar, and coke parties!? What has this world come to?

If an artist is creating for the sole purpose of making money, they are not an artist. That is called a SELL OUT.

I am a writer, and if anybody reads what I write I am happy, because I wrote it to express something.

The judge and jury who handed down this verdict should be ashamed of the way they are pandering to the rich and crapping on the poor (like always).

Joey said...

LOL at anonymous above.

"All art is for profit."

Bullshit. I myself am a musician and have given away all of my music for free for years.

"I was laid off by a record company due to declining profits--a direct result of lost revenue from illegal downloading."

Again I'm going to have to call bullshit. With the invention of the internet and home recording becoming cheap and easy, record companies are on the path to irrelevance. Original, talented musicians (the ones you ignore to promote the same tripe you've given us for years) are finding their own audiences online, bringing them to shows and selling discs to them directly. Your business model is to sell expensive, ass-flavored water when it's raining. Really good music will make money hand over fist no matter how many people are downloading it, you just refuse to promote good music. Good riddance.

Anonymous said...

anybody know the details of where she downloaded this music?

Anonymous said...

This ruling is completely unjust. How dare they, the "justice" system dump all the grief on one solitary individual like this. They basically have stolen the rest of this woman's life to protect their opulent lifestyle. Absolutely disgusting! The songs cost 99 cents each. If I stole 21 donuts from a bakery would I get convicted to pay $1.9 million for them? The premise of "Justice" is that the punishment fits the crime. This doesn't. This is complete bullshit. If the record companies and Justice system keep up that kind of extremely oppressive rape of the common people they are going to have worse things to worry about than lost profits and copyright infrindgement - just like every repressive regime in history the outrage of the masses will sooner or later reach a boiling point.

Mike said...

The RIAA is just trying to make a statement to scare people. If they are losing money, it is because they aren't keeping up with technology (take a lesson from the American auto companies) not because that woman downloaded 24 songs. It is absurd. If someone is a true music fan of the band, they buy the CD for the better music quality or buy it from itunes to support them. The bands losing out are the sell out, one hit wonder, pop gimmicks who make money off of people who heard the song on the radio and got duped into paying for the whole album. They won't be around very long anyway. Did they really think file sharing was just going to go away with Napster????

Anonymous said...

i think it's about time we start stringing some of these people up from the lightpoles by their intestines.

Ninja-Samwray said...

That's a pretty efficient way of turning clients and potential clients into enemies. This guy there who get fired is blaming the downloaders but he should blame his own company. The phonographic industry lack of vision and mobility is what is causing them to go down the pipe.

When they understand people will NOT buy everything they download but they will buy stuff they like evenif they HAVE DOWNLOADED it maybe they will become our partners and not the people we hate. I currently buy stuff for the sake of the artists, if it were for the companies I'd just let them rot to death with this behavior they adopted.

Anonymous said...

now im scared? na, i think ill keep on downloading!

Anonymous said...

As "Il postino di Neruda" so wisely said: "Art does not belong to the one who makes it, it belongs to the one who needs it". This is not a problem of artists and people stilling their rights, this is a problem of greedy merchants of somebody else's creation. My message to the laid-off people of the industry: F#*k off. To the artists: keep up your hard work, it means much more than just money. To the illegal dowlnoaders: if you use your music for just an unimportant and untranscendent way of having fun, download as much as you want and keep doing it with out following the music industry rules, if you are a real follower of an artist message, wich happens to be, transcendental and important for you, you should pay tribute to the artist who is showing you something important for you by paying for their music, at least once in a while...

Anonymous said...

Teh stupid woman used Kazaa for dl & ul the f1les - teh fine of $1,9 is motivate just for being that total moronic!

The files she was fined to share to others was:
- Guns N' Roses: "Welcome to the Jungle" och "November Rain"
- Vanessa Williams: "Save the Best for Last"
- Janet Jackson: "Let's Wait Awhile"
- Gloria Estefan: "Here We Are", "Coming Out of the Dark" och "Rhythm is Gonna Get You"
- Goo Goo Dolls: "Iris"
- Journey: "Faithfully" och "Don't Stop Believing"
- Sarah McLachlan: "Possession" och "Building a Mystery"
- Aerosmith: "Cryin'"
- Linkin Park: "One Step Closer"
- Def Leppard: "Pour Some Sugar on Me"
- Reba McEntire: "One Honest Heart"
- Bryan Adams: "Somebody"
- No Doubt: "Bathwater", "Hella Good" och "Different People"
- Sheryl Crow: "Run Baby Run"
- Richard Marx: "Now and Forever"
- Destiny's Child: "Bills, Bills, Bills"
- Green Day: "Basket Case"

The case was first built on 1500 files but was reduced to these 24 files to make the lawsuit more easier to handle.

Also notice that this woman was the only one amongst 5000 that wouldn't settle with the first threatening letter the "mafia" sent out. All the others toke the deal and paid the offer between $2,500-$5,000 so they didn't have to risk to go to court and get sued for this kind of ridiculous amounts of money, well all of those who actually was alive I mean cause the "mafia" also sent some letters to dead people to for sharing files. :P

So get av VPN-service instantly is my advice to you all even if you not are a pirate - it's not worth the risk if some one haxx your network and you get blamed for filesharing.

Anonymous said...

In response to Screw that lady. I was laid off by a record company due to declining profits--a direct result of lost revenue from illegal downloading. It's not just superstar artists that lose when people illegally download, it's the hundreds of people at the record label that work in marketing, sales, radio, publicity and office support staff. People that make less than $60,000 a year, people with families and 4 kids just like this lady. She should have settled when she had the chance, screw her. I used to have an office, a 401K, health insurance etc. Now I have an unemployment check, me and about 2000 other former employees of the record company I worked for.
Unless you personally discovered a recording artist at a local bar/venue there is a good chance myself or a former co-worker had something to do with your being turned on to an artist you read about, heard on the radio, via a website etc. All art is for profit, if it wasn't you could borrow a Van Gogh from the museum for the weekend. It's just sharing right?


It's very unfortunate that you lost your job and that 1999 of your fellow colleagues also lost their job. But, I find it amazing that a company went completely out of business because of music downloads. If that was the case indeed, then I think the company was doomed to fail. Companies who are distributing records online are not failing because people want songs on their hand-held devices and the easiest way is to buy it. It's very likely that this woman downloaded songs just so she could listen to them on her computer. What about the people who distributed it? Why aren't they being tracked down and punished? That single woman is being punished for the acts of people who distributed the content on purpose. If anything, she should be fined for stealing and pay for the songs. The RIAA are witch hunters and they are burning the helpless alive in the hope that they make an example of them. The only thing this trial has accomplished is wasting the courts time, wasting the Jury's time, and encouraging more people to download illegally to spite the RIAA.

I don't think there is an easy solution to illegal downloading, but fining a single woman millions is ludicrous, unjust, unfair, and unconstitutional.

In addition, I believe your comment was a little harsh. I mean, she is receiving more of a punishment than someone who might drive drunk and kill a car load of teens. Is that justice?

Post a Comment

Dear spammers! Please note that a nofollow attribute is automatically added to all the comment-related links!

You can use the following HTML tags: <b>, <i>, <a>