14 DAY TRIAL // For all the grandstanding and threats, there have only been a few copyright infringement cases brought against individual users that have gone to court. One of the best known ones is that of Jammie Thomas-Rasset who has been accused of sharing 24 songs over Kazaa. In what is now her third trial, she has once again lost and was once again awarded record damage penalties amounting to $1.5 million.
A jury found that the Minnesota woman is to pay $1.5 million in damages to the recording industry, specifically Capitol records, $62,500 per song she made available.
The conclusion of the third trial maintains the guilty verdict and the practically impossible to cover damages, just the figure has changed.
Jammie Thomas-Rasset was part of the first wave of the RIAA's move to go after individual file-sharers in an effort to cut down on online piracy.
The music industry trade group sent thousands of letters to Americans threatening to sue unless they settled for a pre-determined sum, in the low thousands of dollars.
She chose to go to court instead of settling, the jury in the first case found her guilty and the judge ordered her to pay $220,000 in damages. However, this first trial was invalidated with the judge saying that he gave incorrect instructions to the jury.
A second trial went even worse with the woman asked to pay $1.92 million in damages, $80,000 per song. The judge in the case, however, believed the sum to be out of proportion with the actual damage and later lowered the amount to $54,000.
At that point, the RIAA offered to settle the case for $25,000 as long as the last ruling, which lowered the damages, was dismissed.
Jammie Thomas-Rasset again refused pushing for a third trial, which has now ended with the jury asking for yet another ridiculous sum in damages, surprising few. And it's not over yet, the woman says that she plans to appeal this judgement as well.