Copying and Distributing Music on the Internet

The verdict was out three days ago in the Capital Records v Jammie Thomas case and the defendant was held guilty of copyright infringement. The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has been suing people for copyright infringement for a while but they were all dismissed or settled out of court for about $4000-$5000 per defendant, but this is the first case that actually went to trial.

According to the plaintiff’s counsel Richard Gabriel the crux of the matter was ”copyright infringement over the Internet” and that the defendant knowingly infringed the laws by distributing songs over KaZaA and said that “Downloading and distribution doesn’t happen by accident.” In the jury trial  it was held that the defendant Jammie Thomas was guily of copyright infringement and was ordered to pay RIAA a total of $222,000.00 calculated as $9250.00 for each of the 22 songs that was infringed. This is the first time RIAA has won a jury verdict against an accused file sharer.

Now none of this money will go to the artists but will only embolden RIAA to aggressively sent out more threats to sue individuals. Defendant Thomas announced that she has decided to appeal the verdict which basically held that “making sons available on-line violates copyright.” This maybe temporary victory for RIAA but is definitely not going to stop the sharing of music,  for each person who is sued there will be thousands who will continue the music sharing trend and get away with it.