Mother takes on US music industry
Mother takes on US music industry in first piracy trial
The American music industry has lined itself up against a 30-year-old mother of two from Minnesota after choosing to take its fight against individuals charged with illegally sharing music over the internet to court for the first time.
Jammie Thomas is accused by six of the world’s largest record labels of illegally using Kazaa, the file-sharing website, of illegally making nearly 2,000 tracks, ranging from Enya to Swedish death metal, available for download in 2005.
She could be fined as much as $1.2 million if she loses the landmark case, which is being portrayed by the record labels as a key battle in their fight for survival in the internet era.
Ms Thomas, who has insisted she did nothing wrong, is the first of more than 26,000 Americans accused of digital music piracy to oppose the charges in court.
She said yesterday: “I do know that I didn't do this, and the jury will hear that I did not do this.”
Others in similar positions have chosen to settle out of court, with most paying fines of a few thousand dollars.
The music industry says that the trend for defendants to settle “speaks to the clarity of the law” that forbids digital bootlegging.
However, lawyers for defendants have argued that their clients have settled because trials cost tens of thousands of dollars.
"I refuse to be bullied,” Ms Thomas, who works for the Department of Natural Resources of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, a Native American tribe that has sovereign status under US law, said.
In the UK the music industry has taken legal action against more than 100 individuals. None of those cases has yet been contested in court.
The record labels claim that their continuing battle against piracy represents a fight for the future of their industry, which has seen sales of music plummet as consumers opt to use the web to bootleg tracks.
The digital music market nearly doubled in value last year, from $1.1 billion to $2 billion (£542 million to £985 million), but the growth has not compensated for the overall decline in CD sales, which have slumped globally by 23 per cent since 2000.
Some estimates suggest that for every track legitimately bought from a music site as many as 40 are digitally bootlegged. A recent report by TNS, the market researchers, estimated that about £1 billion had been lost through digital piracy in the UK over the past three years.
Jennifer Pariser, the head of litigation and antipiracy at Sony BMG, one of the labels pursuing the case, told the court: "It is imperative for Sony BMG to combat this problem. If we don't, we have no business anymore."
The record labels’ case rests on them proving that Ms Thomas shared 25 specific songs in violation of copyrights the companies hold.
They are seeking damages set under federal law of $750 to $30,000 for each copyright violation.
Ms Thomas's computer hard drive will be also be scrutinised. She claims that she replaced the component – the computer’s memory – after her computer experienced problems in 2005.
The record companies dispute that and claim that she attempted to cover her tracks after they sent her messages saying that she was illegally distributing music files.
Virgin Records America, Capitol Records and Warner Bros Records are among the companies suing Ms Thomas.
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Re: Mother takes on US music industry
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