dvdsecurityHave you ever downloaded a song, a movie, or any other kind of file from a peer to peer file sharing system? Now that is a rhetorical question, as you may have surmised – no need to answer that. As you may know, however, industries and authorities are trying hard to crack down on illegal downloading. All over the world, governments have laid down measures in an effort to stem piracy in this venue. Rarely do we hear about people being actually caught.

Rare as it may be, the statistics do not matter to Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a woman from Minnesota, who has been found guilty of violating copyright issues. As a matter of fact, Jammie’s case is the only known case about file-sharing to have gone to court. Her case was first heard in 2007. This resulted in the court asking her to pay $222,000 for her crime.

A new trial was ordered by the judge soon after, though. The rationale was that the jury was not given the proper instructions. While Jammie might have thought that her plight would take a turn for the better, it was not to be so. The second trial has resulted in a much graver fine – a stupendous $80,000 for each song that she had downloaded. Counting everything that was recorded, she has to pay $1.92 million!

While we do know that illegal downloading should not be condoned, paying the recording industry this much money is just simply silly, isn’t it? I wonder what the jury was thinking!

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