Fined $9,250 per song for file sharing: is this really a fair judgment?

This is Jammie Thomas. She offered to share over one thousand tracks online. She was caught, charged, and chose to fight her battle in court. As a result a jury found her guilty of sharing 24 of them and fined her $220,000, nearly ten thousand dollars per track.

Now, there's no doubt that Jammie knew what she was doing was illegal. I've heard many an argument saying it shouldn't be (the stupidest so far being "it's not like stealing a car because it's not like you no longer have it") and there's a strong argument to suggest that the days of DRM are numbered and the music industry is just doing whatever it can to rake in the costs before then. But given that the amount was decided by a jury, twelve good "men" and true that make up a cross-section of society, can we really say the music industry is the only party that believes that file sharing should be punished? And if so, was this a fair judgment?

The music industry is undergoing a massive revolution. Somehow, it wasn't quite ready for digital music downloads, file sharing and the like, and despite a few years to catch up, it's still dragging its heels. Interestingly it's the bands - those most likely to lose out from free file sharing as they often see the smallest return from their intellectual property - who are pioneering the movement towards DRM-free, user-controlled downloads. Radiohead's faith in their fans is bearing out precisely what Tech Digest's Stuart Dredge predicted - that a very small percentage are likely to buy In Rainbows for a penny even though they've been invited to pay what they want. As an Internet honesty box it's working remarkably well; the pre-ordering system and vox pops indicate that lots of fans are already planning to buy the £40 CD package (which nets them the download for free as well).

So in view of all that, should Jammie be punished for simply living in the future? Well, yes. It's still illegal, whatever should be the case. By all means exert your rights as a consumer by refusing to buy whatever product you think is unnecessarily overpriced, but if you're breaking the law you're breaking the law. However, I find the sentence to be phenomenally draconian and excessive. The record company is unlikely to have lost that much money from potential sales. If anything, there would have been people downloading to try something out who might have gone on to buy further tracks by the relevant artists in the future. Haven't we all given music to someone who has gone on to like what we've recommended and actually paid for it later? If Jammie had lent out her CD collection, the record company never would have known about it. The Internet is their symbol for all that is falling apart around their ears and they react explosively.

And yet, it was a jury that decided the final amount, so one would hope there would be some compelling evidence to suggest that what Jammie did was that expensive a crime. I for one, however, can't work out what it was. She was wrong, so she should pay an appropriate fine, not be made the download generation's whipping girl.

What do you think? Fair play or unfair pay? Let us know.

Alex Roumbas is Deputy Editor of Shiny Shiny. She hopes the record companies will have the decency to let the judgment stand without collecting the cash.