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Win for record companies

DULUTH: The U.S. recording industry won a key fight against illegal music downloading when a federal jury found a Minnesota woman shared copyrighted music online, and levied $2.22 lakh in damages against her.

The jury ordered Jammie Thomas, 30, to pay the six record companies that sued her $9,250 for each of 24 songs they focussed on in the case. They alleged she shared 1,702 songs online in violation of their copyright.

In the first such lawsuit to go to trial, the companies accused Ms. Thomas of downloading the songs without permission and offering them online through a Kazaa file-sharing account. Ms. Thomas denied wrongdoing and testified she did not have a Kazaa account.

Companies have filed some 26,000 lawsuits since 2003 over file-sharing, which has hurt sales because it allows people to get music for free instead of paying for recordings in stores. Many defendants settled by paying the companies a few thousand dollars each. Ms. Thomas chose to fight it out.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) says the lawsuits have mitigated illegal sharing, even though music file-sharing is rising overall. The group says the number of U.S. households that have used file-sharing programs to download music has risen from 6.9 million monthly in April 2003, before the lawsuits began, to 7.8 million in March 2007.

During the three-day trial, the companies presented evidence they said showed that the copyrighted songs were offered by a Kazaa user under the name “tereastarr.” Their witnesses, including officials from an Internet service provider and a security firm, testified that the Internet address used by “tereastarr” belonged to Ms. Thomas. — AP

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