A federal jury in Duluth found a Minnesota woman liable for willful copyright infringement yesterday for making nearly 2,000 songs available for sharing on the Kazaa file-sharing service. It
awarded the music companies a total of $220,000. Of the more than 26,000 lawsuits that record labels have filed against alleged pirates since 2003, it was the first to actually be tried before a jury.
The labels--EMI Group PLC's Capitol Records; Arista Records LLC and its parent Sony BMG Music Entertainment; Vivendi SA's UMG Recordings and UMG's Interscope Records; and Warner Music
Group's Warner Bros. Records--now could step up their practice of suing people they believe are illegally sharing music.
Opponents of the labels' legal strategy say the suits amount to
little more than a shakedown of people who often have been unfairly fingered because of difficulties establishing who is using the computers. The labels say the suits are an important deterrent in the
fight to preserve their intellectual property.
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