A Boston University graduate student who admitted he had illegally downloaded and shared 30 songs has been ordered to pay $675,000.
Under federal law, the jury could have ordered Joel Tenenbaum, of Providence, R.I., to pay the four recording labels involved between $750 and $30,000 per infringement, the Associated Press reported. Law allows as much as $150,000 per track if the jury found the infringements were willful. The maximum Tenenbaum could have been fined was $4.5 million.
In the end, the jury ordered the 25-year-old student to pay $22,500 per incident of copyright infringement, the wire service reported.
The case is the country’s second music downloading case against an individual to go to trial. You can read about the first here.
The courts are on the side of the big, fat music publishers when it comes to copyright infringement. But $675,000 ? That’s a lot of pepperoni pizza!
Can you spell s-c-a-p-e-g-o-a-t ?
Comment by Local Eyes — August 3rd, 2009 @ 8:15 am