Euro-Counsels

The trial against Ms Thomas in the United States reached an end this week. Ms Thomas, a mother of two children, was condemned to pay to the recording industry $222,000 (€157,000) for sharing copyrighted music online.

The Jury took into consideration 24 songs amongst a folder of 1,702 songs shared with users of the software Kazaa on the Internet, and allowed a $9,250 (€6,556) damages for each song.

"Cases such as this remind us strong enforcement is a significant part of the effort to eliminate piracy, and that we have an effective legal system in the U.S. that enables rights holders to protect their intellectual property," said Chris Israel, the U.S. Coordinator for International Intellectual Property Enforcement, to CNET News.com.

The congressman Rick Boucher, interviewed by CNET News.com said "I have no sympathy for people who engage in illegal peer-to-peer file sharing. These damages are obviously excessive and are way out of line as compared to the kinds of settlements that have been entered into in similar kinds of cases in the us and in other countries. Even though they have now a very large damage award entered against a person who the jury found was engaged in file sharing, that's not really going to diminish the amount of file sharing that occurs. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure that there's anything the industry could do at this point that is going to eliminate it."

It seems evident that the RIAA is maintaining an faltering business model with agressive tactics and scaremongering, whilst searching for a new model that will assure stable future revenues.