US Woman Ordered To Pay $1.92 Million In Music Piracy Case

MINNEAPOLIS (AFP)--A U.S. jury Thursday ordered a 32-year-old woman to pay $1.92 million in damages for illegally downloading 24 songs in a high-profile digital piracy case.

Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a single mother of four from the U.S. 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 - or $80,000 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 in damages but the judge who presided over that trial threw out the verdict, calling it "wholly disproportionate" and "oppressive."

The Recording Industry Association of America, or RIAA, and major music labels have brought suit against thousands of people for illegally downloading and sharing music, with most agreeing to settlements of between $3,000 and $5,000.

Thomas-Rasset was the first among those being sued to refuse a settlement and instead took the case to court.

In December, the RIAA said it would stop suing people who download music illegally and focus instead on getting Internet service providers to take action.

The move away from litigation represented a major shift in strategy for the music industry group, which had filed lawsuits against about 35,000 people for online music piracy since 2003.