The Artful Jurist

People are all astir over the $1.92 million verdict a Minneapolis jury imposed on a 32-year-old single mom it found guilty of illegally downloading songs from the Internet. Using one of the online peer-to-peer file sharing services, she downloaded 24 songs. That’s $80,000 per song, for you non-math majors.

The Recording Industry Association of America had filed the suit?one can only imagine, in part as a warning to others. Well, that warning seems to have had some impact. At least, that’s the impression I get from the concerned-faced friends who’ve been asking me what I think about this.

What do I think?...Well, as an artist who owns my share of copyrights, I worry about illegal downloading of intellectual property. But I guess I’m much more concerned about the peer-to-peers that operate as legal businesses. And “legal” they are, so long as they also serve non-infringing purposes and don’t knowingly encourage or allow infringing activities to go on. That’s the legal argument that allowed Sony to win the case when the entertainment industry tried to put the kibosh on home VCRs.

So what about this woman in Minnesota? What’s going to happen to her? I can only guess. But my guess is she won’t end up paying the almost $2 million (which, from what I’ve heard, she doesn’t have anyway). I’m also guessing she’ll be getting her music from this point forward from places where it’s sold rather than swapped.