Single-mother fined record £100,000 for illegally sharing internet music in landmark case

Last updated at 15:08 05 October 2007


A woman has been ordered to pay a massive £110,000 in compensation to six giant recording companies for illegally downloading 24 tunes on the Internet in the first case of its kind to go to trial.

The payout means the songs cost 30 year-old single mother Jammie Thomas £4,500 each. She was warned that had the companies sued her for all 1,700 songs they found in her computer she could have faced a bill of £125 million.

Miss Thomas, a supermarket clerk, left the court in tears. Her lawyer, Brian Toder said: "She's devastated. This is a girl who lives from paycheque to paycheque, and now all of a sudden she could get a quarter of her wages withheld for the rest of her life."

 

The companies, including Sony, Arista and Capitol, had offered to settle with Miss Thomas for about £1,000 – as they have done with 26,000 other offenders across the US.

But she vowed to fight saying she had done nothing wrong. Hers was the first case to go to a full trial.

Last night the companies hailed the decision as a major breakthrough in their battle with record pirates. They say illegal Internet file-sharing, when songs and tunes are swapped free over the Internet has crippled the music industry since it took off four years ago because people are buying fewer CDs.

 

Music downloading is legal if it is done through websites like iTunes which pay royalties to the record companies. But the court heard Miss Thomas used an illegal site that pays no royalties in breach of copyright.

In Britain, the music industry's watchdog, the BPI, estimates that 7.4 million Britons have illegally downloaded songs at some time and says that illegal file sharing costs the British music industry £650 million a year.

About 140 people considered frequent offenders settled lawsuits brought against them before the BPI changed tack this year and started negotiations with Internet service providers to shut down offenders and deny them Internet access.

Those talks continue but record chiefs warn that if they are not successful by the end of the year, 'big lawsuits' will follow against individuals.

Last night the BPI hailed the US case as a 'major success' because it warns offenders how steep the penalties can be.

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