The future doesn't look very bright for illegal file sharers, at least in the US, after two high-profile cases have seen record statutory damages awarded to the RIAA – damages that the US Department of Justice believes are constitutional, defending the $1.92 million in damages Jammie Thomas-Rasset now has to pay for sharing 24 songs over Kazaa. The DOJ filed a legal brief on Friday in response to Thomas-Rasset's attorney’s claim that the damages were unconstitutional.

Thomas-Rasset was recently found guilty of sharing 24 songs over the now defunct file-sharing network Kazaa and ordered to pay $80,000 per song, adding up to $1.92 million. Hers was the first ever case of person accused of file sharing by the RIAA going to court in the US. Normally the RIAA would send the people it believed to have illegally shared music online a settlement letter offering to not pursue the claim in court if the person paid an amount of money, usually a few thousand dollars. Thomas-Rasset refused to settle and a full trial was set in motion. She lost the first trial and had to pay $220,000 in damages to the RIAA. The woman appealed the ruling but the second trial followed the same path.

The DOJ defends the jury's ruling and believes the damages to be constitutional. Not only that, but the DOJ defends the law behind the high statutory damages saying that it was put in place specifically to act as a compelling deterrent. "Congress has crafted a statute that serves as a deterrent to those infringing parties who think they will go undetected in committing this great public wrong,” the legal brief read.

Damages for this kind of cases were increased in 1999 in the Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act, raising the amount to a maximum of $150,000 per infringement. The DOJ believes that the raised statutory damages help with the fight against piracy and that they would only be a problem if they were "so severe and oppressive as to be wholly disproportioned to the offense and obviously unreasonable." The $1.92 million awarded in this case are proportionate to the offense of sharing 24 songs and obviously reasonable, the DOJ seems to believe. Thomas-Rasset's attorney is looking to file a third suit on account of the huge damages claimed.