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Posted By engineer 5 months, 3 weeks ago in News

(CNN) -- A federal jury Thursday found a 32-year-old Minnesota woman guilty of illegally downloading music from the Internet and fined her $80,000 each -- a total of $1.9 million -- for 24 songs

Federal jury finds Jammie Thomas-Rasset guilty of illegally downloading 24 songs
Minnesota wife, mom slapped with fine of $80,000 per song, for total of $1.9 million
Attorney says client shocked at fine, noting the songs costs 99 cents each
Spokeswoman for the Recording Industry Association of America lauds jury's finding.

Read Full Story at cnn.com »

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    engineer5 months, 3 weeks ago

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    The fines are fully obscene!!!

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      engineer5 months, 3 weeks ago

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      Considering the lack of talent put out the "music" industry, the industry should be fined for demoralizing and destroying our society due to the crap which they put out.

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        Endoscopy5 months, 2 weeks ago

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        As the opening of the Beretta show said. If you can't stand the time don't do the crime. She did over 1700 songs and refused to pay the $1000 fine but wanted a trial. Well she got one and the jury found her story less than convincing. They only charged her for 24 songs.

        Her family stole all of those songs. Using the p2p software it opens your computer to allow others to take them. This has been told many times but she allowed it to be put it on there. Most of those programs are open about how they work. You can download if you allow others to download from you. This opens your computer for anybody with an equivalent program to take ANYTHING off of your computer. NEVER EVER PUT A P2P PROGRAM ON YOUR COMPUTER UNLESS YOU CAN CONTROL WHAT COMES OFF OF IT.

        If your kids do it you are responsible.

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        publiconet165 months, 2 weeks ago

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        This is exactly what the Music Industry wanted a Scape goat for their crap music they blame everything on music sharing and or on line single music d/l.Their nuts..first of all they will never ever see the money,if you want to curb D/L sell decent music at fair prices.I think it would be Great idea if more People stop Buying their crap music and the Record company CEO,s stop getting paid Millions for nothing.

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          reallypsst5 months, 2 weeks ago

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          I hope it wasn't limewire, whats next youtube !

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            Endoscopy5 months, 2 weeks ago

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            They are already after youtube because of people putting on copyrighted material.

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            MisterX5 months, 2 weeks ago

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            This is unconscionable by any stretch. Our justice system will allow these fines for music, but they want to put caps on medical malpractice suites.

            Music today is so crappy, they should pay me to listen to it.

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              Endoscopy5 months, 2 weeks ago

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              The problem is they are not capping medical malpractice suits. As a result certaind specialties like some surgeons etc. have over $1 million malpractice insurance a year. Guess who pays for that insurance. It is a big cost of health care. One doctor on a talk show said there is a two word method of lowering medical costs. "Loser pays!" That would take away the frivolous lawsuits and only the real ones would go forward.

              If the lawyer and client had to pick up court costs and opposing counsel fees there would be a lot less of them. At present the lawyers force their clients to pay all fees and take a percent of the winnings. This leads to a lot of cases where the outcome is very unlikely and the lawyers win enough to make it worth while. That just adds to the insurance costs.

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                MisterX5 months, 2 weeks ago

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                Once Ms. Thomas-Rasset goes bankrupt over this (all 24 tunes), she will probably go on welfare, collect food stamps, and get other financial goodies to support her family. We will all be supporting Ms. Thomas-Rasset because of a truly greedy industry with an antiquated business model and a bunch of lawmakers in its pocket.

                The RIAA wins (they will never in 20 million years collect all of this), Ms. Thomas-Rasset loses, Ms. Thomas-Rasset's family loses, the tax-payer will lose.

                I guess this can be called "spreading the wealth".

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              cleare5 months, 2 weeks ago

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              absoeffinglutely outrageous!!!

              the punishment far outweighs the crime. what was the jury thinking? why didn't the judge override? was he up for re-election?

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                BronxBomber5 months, 2 weeks ago

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                Oh man! I can't add to this. The comments are just too good. But this is a clear case of overkill. I mean c'mon...the woman in question doesn't happen to be related to the swindler Madoff.

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                  BronxBomber5 months, 2 weeks ago

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                  WTF was that jury thinking and what does it take to be a juror in that state?

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                    Fangarius5 months, 2 weeks ago

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                    Bad enough the music industries are wanting this 'performance tax' with radio, they'll do anything for a profit. Even establish outrageous fines for downloads. Sort of reminds me when they once 'caught' an illegal downloader, and they were going to make an example of the person.

                    Turned out it was young girl who thought she was legally downloading tunes through a respectable service. Talk about blacking the fed's and music industry's eyes on that one!

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                    Charlson5 months, 2 weeks ago

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                    This type of judgement makes me want to stick it to the Recording Industry. One thing is sure, the $1.9 million won't help pay for all the bad publicity they'll get. This will not stop the billion dollar counterfeiting that's costing them much more than illegal downloading.

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                      jmopinion5 months, 2 weeks ago

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                      Wonder who paid that jury off. Go after China and some of these other countries where you can get anything you want.

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                        globalwarmer5 months, 2 weeks ago

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                        You'd think they'd have to prove she was copying the music to CD's and selling them. They obviously want to make an example of someone, anyone who they can convict in order to scare people not to download music. How the hell is she supposed to pay that fine, get a second job? How can you be convicted for downloading music? Shouldn't they go after the sites that make them available for download? It doesn't make any effing sense!

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                          Endoscopy5 months, 2 weeks ago

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                          The p2p software allows others to take the files off of her computer. That is what they proved. That is giving away for free these music files. That is absolutely illegal. I do not agree with what the music companies did to cause this problem but it is still illegal to take others work product without paying for it unless they are the ones giving it away with right to pass it on.

                          If you wrote something and was selling it would you want to have others making copies of it and giving it away to others that might have bought it? These files are the product of musicians who are selling their work not giving it away for free. Those companies make their profit from selling that work and passing the percent to the authors of it. Taking for free and giving it to others is in actual fact stealing. Too many people do not want to see this.

                          What caused this problem in the first place is the fact that the record companies refused to allow the product to be sold on a song by song basis and allow the local stores to make special CD's that way before CD's blowers were cheap. If they had allowed that this would not be an issue.

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