Million-Dollar Fines for Illegal Music Downloads: Fair or Foul?
A federal jury in Minnesota has awarded the Recording Industry Association of America $1.92 million dollars in its copyright infringement case against Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a 32 year-old woman from Brainerd, MN, for allegedly offering 24 songs for download on the Kazaa file-sharing platform.
Approximately 35,000 people have been threatened with legal action by the recording industry for illegal downloading, but Rasset’s case was the first and only one of its kind to reach trial proceedings. For copyright violations, juries may enter verdicts of up to $150,000 per song pursuant to federal law.
Online music piracy has exploded since the advent of peer-to-peer networking and was popularized on the heels of software such as Napster. According to a 2007 study by the Institute for Policy Innovation, music piracy costs American workers $2.7 billion dollars annually, and 71,060 jobs are lost each year. Piracy divests artists of their rights to their own intellectual property and circumvents the traditional financial compensation structure. Currently, there are myriad channels available for legally acquiring music including iTunes, Zune, and Amazon.
Piracy remains a rampant problem, but the helter-skelter pursuit of individual offenders is not the answer. The recording industry should focus its collective energy on ensuring that P2P networking sites themselves are implementing adequate precautionary measures to deter copyright infringement. Such a strategy would effect a more equitable distribution of liability and prevent individuals from shouldering a disproportionate share.
