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<b>BREAKING NEWS:</b> RIAA Wins File-Sharing Suit

By Steven Salkin
October 04, 2007

A Minnesota woman was found guilty oif illegally downloading music onto her computer — to the tune of $222,000, a jury decided in federal court in Duluth on Oct. 4.

Jammie Thomas was ordered to pay six record companies $9,250 each for 24 songs the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) (http://www.riaa.org/) said the 30-year old from Brainerd, MN, downloaded in violation of copyright law. The RIAA actually claimed that she downloaded over 1,700 songs using Kazaa, but focused on 24 at trial.

Thomas' case was complicated by the fact that she replaced her hard drive after the downloading was alleged to occur, and a date later than Thomas had said in a deposition. Neither party presented that hard drive at trial, although Thomas did use her current hard drive to show how quickly songs can be downloaded to refute testimony that the songs were downloaded too close together to have come from CDs she owned.

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