Woman gets $1.9m fine for file sharing

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been awarded a $1.92m (£1.16m) decision against a woman accused of sharing music online.

A jury ruled that Jammie Thomas-Rasset violated record label copyrights by downloading 24 songs from file-sharing service Kazaa. The jury awarded the labels statutory damages of $80,000 (£48,000) per song.

The case first made news in 2007 when a jury ordered Thomas-Rasset to pay a fine of $224,000 (£136,000). The decision was later thrown out due to the judge's mis-direction of the jury and a retrial was ordered.

The case has been held up as a landmark battle between the RIAA and those accused of downloading music. Most of the accused have settled out of court and few cases have actually gone to trial.

However, the case is far from being officially decided, according to experts. Fred von Lohmann, senior attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said in a blog post that the case is likely to go to appeal.

"Given the size of the statutory damages award, Ms. Thomas-Rasset's legal team will likely be seriously considering a constitutional challenge to the verdict," he wrote.

Von Lohmann cited previous cases in which similarly large damages were overturned by higher courts as "grossly excessive", along with Supreme Court rulings which question the authority of juries to award damages.

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