A US woman has been ordered to pay $1.92 million for downloading 24 tracks from the Kazaa file sharing site - $80,000 per song. The original trial awarded over just over $9000 per song in damages to the record companies but instead got awarded close to ten times more in a retrial. The funny thing in this case is the fact that a much lower settlement offer was on the cards but seemingly refused. The mother of four children against whom the penalties have been secured is defiant in saying there is no way she can ever pay that much and that the record companies will have a hard time getting it from her. She downloaded 24 songs from Kazaa.
As ridiculous as this sounds and as wrong as online piracy is, the record labels themselves are not entirely without fault here. The Compact disk is outdated as a music distribution medium in the Internet age. Yes, many online music shops have come of age, but their pricing (we are talking about legal ones here) models are still structured to compete with compact disc and DVD. You have to ask what the logic is in that. Rest of the Story Here
