Woman paying the price for illegally sharing music

MINNEAPOLIS - Jammie Thomas makes $36,000 a year but says she's not looking for a handout to pay a $222,000 judgment after a jury decided she illegally shared music online.

"I'm not going to ask for financial help," she told the Associated Press on Friday. But she added, "If it comes, I'm not going to turn it down, either."

Record labels have sued more than 26,000 people they accuse of downloading and offering music for sharing online in violation of copyright laws. Many of those people have settled by paying the companies a few thousand dollars.

Thomas was the first person to fight back all the way to a trial. Six major record companies accused Thomas of offering 1,702 songs on the Kazaa file-sharing network. At trial, they focused on 24 songs, and jurors decided Thursday that Thomas willfully violated the copyright on all 24. Their verdict was for damages of $9,250 per song, or $222,000.

The recording industry won two victories with that verdict.

Beyond the money, the industry added to a growing body of legal precedents holding that making copyright-protected songs available online, even without proof the songs went anywhere, infringes on the copyrights for the songs.

U.S. District Court Judge Michael Davis was planning to instruct jurors as they began their deliberations that record companies would have to prove someone copied the songs to show copyright infringement.

But Richard Gabriel, a lawyer representing the record companies, cited cases in which making songs available was found to be infringement, and Davis changed course.

Legal experts said the question was not settled.

"Record labels don't like that, because it's harder to prove," said Andrew Bridges, a lawyer who has argued for the Computer & Communications Industry Association that copyright holders should have to prove the offerred material is actually used.

"It's all about whether they get a free pass to impose onerous damages on people without actually having to prove a case," Bridges said.

International intellectual-property treaties assume that simply making a work of art available can violate the copyright, said Jane C. Ginsburg, an intellectual-law professor at Columbia Law School.

"It would be hard to see how we could be living up to our international obligations if the law were interpreted differently," she said.

Ray Beckerman, a lawyer who has represented people sued by the record companies, said the companies used one case where there was a $22,500 default judgment to scare people into settling.

"Now, look at this. This is 10 times better. They can talk about this case, they can use it for frightening people," he said.

Beckerman said the damage award was disproportionate to the price of the 24 songs Thomas was accused of sharing for free. She could have bought them for 99 cents each on a legal download site, he said.

Gabriel argued at trial that Thomas made the songs available to millions of users on Kazaa.

The lawsuits have cost more than they have brought in. But the Recording Industry Association of America has said it wants the lawsuits to send a message that downloading music illegally is risky.