All Blog Posts from Crimesider

BOSTON - A federal jury on Friday ordered a Boston University graduate student, who admitted illegally downloading and sharing music online, to pay $675,000 to four record labels.

Joel Tenenbaum, of Providence, R.I., admitted in court that he downloaded and distributed 30 songs. The only issue for the jury to decide was how much in damages to award the record labels.

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BOSTON - It sounds absurd.

A Boston University graduate student is being taken to court by a powerful coalition of record companies for downloading music from the Internet. If he loses, he could be forced to cough up $1 million in fines for downloading dozens of songs.

Think it can’t happen?

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NEW YORK - If you share your music online, perhaps you should start saving now.

Last week we reported on a Minnesota mom who defended herself against the recording industry and got slapped with $1.92 million in fines for sharing 24 songs over the Internet.

Today, Jammie Thomas-Rasset was on CBS' The Early Show to make her case.

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MINNEAPOLIS - $1.92 million. That's the amount a federal jury ruled Thursday that a Minnesota mom who shared music on the Internet must pay the world's four largest record companies. That's $80,000 for each of the 24 songs she was charged with sharing.

“There's no way they're ever going to get that,” said Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a 32-year-old mother of four from the central Minnesota city of Brainerd. “I'm a mom, limited means, so I'm not going to worry about it now.”

Aside from the enormous sum awarded, Thomas-Rasset's case is unusual in that it is national's only file-sharing case to have gone to trial, not once, but twice.

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MINNEAPOLIS - A Minnesota woman who became the nation's only music file-sharing defendant so far to go to trial is getting a replay two years after losing the case.

Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a 32-year-old mother of four and self-described “huge music fan,” will be armed with aggressive new lawyers when her retrial begins in federal court here Monday.

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