Capital Records, Inc. v. Jammie Thomas-Rasset

Capital Records sued Jammie Thomas-Rasse on a copyright violation theory claiming that she downloaded 24 songs from Kazaa.

Thomas was sharing 24 songs on Kazaa, and the statutory fine can be imposed anywhere between $750 and $30,000 per infringement, with a $150,000 ceiling for wilful violation, aimed at wilful infringers. The court placed the fine somewhere in the middle, at $9,250 per song.

The music and movie industry argues that P2P software turns everyone into a potential industrial scale pirate: turning a home PC into a server farm capable of delivering infringement to hundreds of concurrent users. But the law doesn't require the plaintiff to show evidence of such infringement - they merely need to show evidence of sharing, not quantify downloads

The defenses asserted by Defendant are not available.

Plaintiffs' verdict for $1.92 million.

Editor's Note: While the Plaintiffs are legally and morally on the right side of cases like this one, they are probably ultimately going to be forced to change their business models to survive. The government can grant copyrights and plaintiffs can use the court of punish people like Jammie Thomas-Rasset for wrongfully using computer technology to download copyrighted materials, but the holders of the copyrights are clearly losing the fight.