[Dion]

Originally Posted by Jayems

24 songs x ~$0.99 = $23.76.

Instead, those songs cost her nearly $80k per pop.

That's a tad ridiculous.

The jury found Thomas-Rasset's conduct to be willful, which means that statutory damages under the Copyright Act can range from $750 per infringement up to $150,000. In his closing statement, defense lawyer Joe Sibley made clear that even the minimum award would run $18,000 (24 songs x $750 = $18,000), an amount that he said was unfair and crippling to Thomas-Rasset. The jury decided that the per-song penalty would be $80,000, for a total damage award of $1.92 million, over $1.7 million more than the award in her first trial.

The recording industry lawyers, though clearly pleased, had no desire to showboat this one. The massive damage award, which increased from $9,250 per song in the first trial to $80,000, might sounds like a "win," but will probably stoke grassroots anger against the industry's campaign... if the music business tries to collect. There are hints that it might not.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...al-verdict.ars