Letters to the Editor
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Yes. but...
... as far as I can make out from reports of this prosecution, she did not just download songs illegally, but was also involved in distributing them on to other people.
She may not have been making any money out of this herself, but her role in distribution is more than likely the reason why she was prosecuted. She also made the mistake of trading in very popular (I think) songs by contemporary artists.
There is a difference between that and downloading content that is available to listeners on Internet radio or over-the-air radio for your personal use so that you can listen to it when you are on the road or away from your computer. Still illegal maybe, but at least the artist is receiving some kind of payment or promotional value at the point of original broadcasting.
Of course thousands, or millions, of people are doing the same thing ( illicit file sharing), but I am sure that a sample prosecution will have a deterrent effect on thousands, if not millions, which is surely the whole point. It is not about the $9000 per song.
It would certainly be interesting to know whether someone who sells bootleg CDs in a flea market or copies a neighbor's CD onto their computer would face similar penalties. Probably not, but then their activities are not taking place in a highly-organized worldwide public forum.
In any case reports of this case will make a lot of people think twice about illegal downloading and/or trading music, knowing that it could blight their present or future careers.
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And also...
... I pointed out to my stepson several years ago when Napster was at its peak of popularity that I did not want him downloading copyright music onto my computer precisely because I didn't want to deal with the possibility, no matter how remotely improbable, of the type of possible repercussions that Jammie Thomas has run into.
I guess I was before my time by a few years, but the warnings were always out there if you wanted to listen to them.
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Not at all unusual for the penalty to vastly exceed the cash cost
If it didn't, why not just infringe the copyright, and then just pay if you get caught?
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It only encourages them
The problem with sending her money to pay those guys off is that they still get the money. It will only encourage them. She can declare bankruptcy, probably keep her house, get a fresh bunch of credit cards and start over again. They would not get one thin dime.
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Sure, it may encourage them - but that's what boycotts are for
If we also boycott RIAA-produced music - and I mean a huge public boycott, not just a privately made decision - they'll get the message. I think a boycott is the only way to send the message very clearly - they might get their $222000, but every time they get a huge verdict like this, they'll lose a lot more in sales. Assuming a CD costs $15, making this kind of verdict unprofitable for them would mean not buying 14,800 CD's. It's not that many.
If you're really jonesing for music, go to a concert, listen to your old recordings, or pick up a musical instrument and make some noise. Or go to CDBaby and buy CD's directly from the artist. There are many options now that do not involve breaking the RIAA-created law while at the same time making our viewpoints clear.
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She needs to pay the piper herself.
She's a thief,pure and simple, and a jury said so. Now she wants to get off on a technicality and have the world pay for it.
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Re "distribution"
In response to those who say "but she wasn't just downloading, she was making them available for distribution": do you not realize that most p2p file sharing programs automatically share any files you download on the network with the rest of the network? Unless you get into the Preferences and disable that option or reroute where your downloads are saved to, everything everyone downloads using clients such as Kazaa, Bearshare, Napster, Limewire, etc., etc., are being "made available for distribution". (And often not only what you download, many of them automatically share your My Music folder and whatever's in it.) That's the way p2p works. Downloading from p2p but not sharing your files to it is kind of cheating, and if everybody did that, there would be no files on Kazaa to download. So is she committing a worse crime by "distributing, not just downloading"? No. She took no action to distribute, may never have had any intent to distribute; she was just downloading music on a p2p network.