$80,000 Per Shared Song Awarded To RIAA

24 songs shared by a single mom from Minnesota via Kazaa have been the center of a law suit brought upon Jammie Thomas-Rasset by the Recording Industry Association of America. On Friday a federal jury in Minnesota found the 32-year-old mother of four guilty of copyright infringement and ordered her to pay $1.92-million or $80,000 per song shared. Her reaction, “There’s no way they’re ever going to get that,” Ms. Thomas-Rasset said after the verdict. “I’m a mom, limited means, so I’m not going to worry about it now.”

For their part the RIAA said this in an e-mail, “When the facts are presented to juries on these issues, they take this issue seriously and appreciate the real harm that’s done to the music community,”

It's not clear whether or not Thomas-Rasset will challenge the decision but I sure hope she does. I also hope that none of the jurors have kids who have shared any music online, or they may live to regret their ruling in this case...

Source: Globe and Mail

Pirate Bay Founders Sentenced To 1 Year In Jail

The 4 founders of The Pirate Bay, the high profile file-sharing site, have each been found guilty of breaking copyright law by a court in Sweden. Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were all sentenced to one year in prison for their part in the crime.

After the decision Mr. Sunde tweeted: "Nothing will happen to TPB, this is just theatre for the media."

"got the news last night that we lost".

"It used to be only movies, now even verdicts are out before the official release."

BBC story here.

Quebec Court Orders Closure Of Downloading Site

The Quebec Superior Court has ordered the closure of downloading site Quebec Torrent granting a permanent injunction against the site and it's administrators. "We hope this judgment will have a dissuasive effect, because nothing prevents us now to target other sites that engage in the same kind of illegal transactions," said Slange Drouin the director-general of The Association québécoise de l'industrie du disque, du spectacle et de la vidéo (ADISQ), a provincial music, video and concert organization. ADISQ also sought $200,000 in damages but have indicated that they would not pursue the damages as Quebec Torrent has said they would not fight the injunction. The site specialized in Quebec content and claimed to have tens of thousands of members. Look out file sharing sites in Quebec! CBC story here.

Drop.io My New Favourite Web App

Here is a dead simple solution to file sharing! drop.io is a new service, since November of '07 according to the interview on net@night, that is largely making itself known by word of mouth. The site allows you to create a "drop", which is "a ‘discrete’ chunk of space you can use to store and share anything (pictures, video, audio, docs, etc) privately" according to the site, without requiring any type of sign up. Free drops allow you 100 MB of space for up to one year while the $10 a year premium drop gives you 1 GB! The really cool thing about drop.io is that it makes it extremely easy for you to set up your drop and receive files from multiple entry points. You can use a familiar web interface, e-mail your files to your drop.io e-mail address, phone your drop.io phone number and leave an audio message that gets converted to .mp3, or send a fax to your drop! As the administrator of your drop, you decide who to send the drop location and password to, it's that simple. The only thing drop.io knows about you is your ip address, for obvious reasons. I'm lovin' it!

Songwriters Association of Canada proposes P2P solution

The Songwriters Association of Canada is proposing a similar solution to the P2P issue as was imposed when the recordable media tax was introduced many years ago. The proposal would have Canadian ISPs (Internet Service Providers) charge each subscriber $5 a month for the right to legally trade music, the fee would then be distributed amongst the artists and content owners. According to Ars Technica "The proposal also hopes to encompass all forms of not-for-profit sharing under the same legal umbrella, whether sharing is done via P2P, wireless networks, e-mail, CD trading, or exchanging hard drives. The proposal excludes tracks obtained from music services like the iTunes Store and PureTracks, since these tracks are governed by their own licensing and value-added incentives." So basically all Canadian Internet subscribers will pay for the thieving ways of the P2P users! I'm not so sure this will go over too well with consumers, but if it becomes reality expect people to want to get their moneys worth...

Whistle blower draws filesharing investigation in Scotland

The BBC is reporting that a Honeywell plant in Motherwell, Scotland has been raided by police and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) after receiving an insider's tip that thousands of illegally copied music files where being housed on company equipment and shared by employees. BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor said in a statement that failure to put an anti-piracy policy in place "could expose the company, and the employees concerned, to the risk of civil proceedings or a criminal investigation." Honeywell says it has a policy in place and is cooperating with the investigation. I wonder how many companies have even considered such policies? Universities certainly have addressed this, so are the music associations now turning their sites towards companies rather than individuals? If policies are in place, how many companies are really enforcing them?