Music industry wins song-download case

By Lewis Krauskopf and Gavin Haycock

NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) - The recording industry has won a major fight in its effort to stop illegal music downloading with a U.S. jury decision to impose $222,000 damages against a Minnesota woman who used a Web service to share music.

Although industry commentators are divided over what impact the case will have on stemming illegal downloads globally, the size of the damages is significant -- nearly 80 times higher than the average European settlement figure in such a case.

The jury in the civil case in the U.S. District Court of Minnesota on Thursday found Jammie Thomas infringed copyrighted song recordings, and awarded damages of $9,250 for each of the 24 recordings cited.

The verdict marked the first jury trial in the U.S. industry's drive to combat piracy with lawsuits against an individual.

According to court documents, the record companies sued Thomas in April 2006 after 1,702 music files involving artists such as Green Day, Aerosmith and Guns 'N' Roses were traced to a computer tied to her. A year earlier, investigators had located an individual with the screen name "tereastarr@KaZaA" using the Kazaa file-sharing software program.

"This individual was downloading copyrighted sound recordings from other users of the Kazaa network, and was distributing copyrighted sound recordings stored on her computer to other Kazaa users," the plaintiffs said.

Thomas, in documents, denied the allegations of the complaint "that relate to any allegations that she ever used any (peer-to-peer) network, including Kazaa."

The record companies involved included EMI Group's Capitol Records, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Arista Records, Interscope Records, Warner Bros Records and UMG Recordings.