Jury Finds Minnesota Woman Guilty of Using P2P Program, Must Pay Richard Marx $9,250

RIAA 1, Kazaa Users 0. In the first trial involving the record-industry union versus an illegal downloader, a jury found Minnesota single mother Jammie Thomas guilty of infringing on music rights. While Thomas was illegally sharing 1,702 songs in her folder, she was only sued for twenty-four recordings. The price she'll have to pay: $222,000, or $9,250 per song, or 9,250 songs bought legally on iTunes. Some of the artists that Thomas was illegally harboring included Janet Jackson, Sarah McLachlan, Godsmack, Richard Marx and many other artists not worth $9,250 a song (honestly, who is? -- but to be fair, those acts were pretty hot in the Nineties).

So what's to be learned from this trial? First, thanks to the win, the RIAA will start gunning for even more P2P users, and two, the record industry thinks ripping tracks from a CD to your computer is theft. "When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song," testified Jennifer Pariser, an exec at Sony BMG. As usual, it sounds like the ailing record industry really has its finger on the pulse of America.

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Song Stories

“Tonight's the Night”

The Shirelles | 1960

The lead cut and title track from this girl group's debut album, "Tonight's the Night" was written by 19-year-old bandmember Shirley Owens, who sings lead, and producer Luther Dixon. The band from Passaic, New Jersey met in high school, first calling themselves the Pequellos. The song's frank thoughts about sexual and emotional surrender was racy for the time, but that didn't stop the Chiffons from cutting a similar version immediately after the original came out. "We were the first female group to write some of our own material," band member Beverly Lee recalls. "We did have some say-so in our writing."

More Song Stories entries »

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