A single mother who was accused of illegally downloading tracks by Guns N’ Roses, Opeth and other band has been ordered to pay $220,000 in damages after a federal jury ruled she shared copyrighted music online.
Six record companies – Sony BMG, Arista Records LLC, Interscope Records, UMG Recordings Inc., Capitol Records Inc. and Warner Bros. Records Inc. – sued the 30-year-old Jammie Thomas (photo: The Associated Press) to pay $9,250 for each of 24 songs they focused on in the case. They had alleged she downloaded 1,702 songs in all without permission and offered them online through a Kazaa file-sharing account.
This is the first such lawsuit to go to trial. Record companies have filed some 26,000 lawsuits since 2003 over file-sharing. Many other defendants have settled by paying the companies “a few thousand dollars”. We just wonder, what part of this money goes to Guns N’ Roses, Opeth and other music authors…?