Tenenbaum Takes A $675K Hit For Illegal File-Sharing

Joel Tenenbaum: And He Thought The Student Loans Were Steep

After less than three hours of deliberation, a BOSTON federal jury has fined BOSTON UNIVERSITY grad student JOEL TENENBAUM a total of $675,000 for the illegal file sharing of 30 songs over the KAZAA P2P network. According to ARSTECHNICA.COM, that translates to damages of $22,500 per song.

The award rests somewhere in the middle of the fines assessed to JAMMIE THOMAS-RASSET. She was hit with a $222,000 fine after being found guilty in the first trial, and but was assessed almost $2 million in damages -- $80,000 per song -- after losing the retrial (NET NEWS, 6/18).

Bottom line scoreboard so far: The two parties to take on the RIAA have lost and were hit with six-figure fines. A huge majority of the approximately 18,000 were cases settled out of court for a few thousand dollars each. Although the RIAA has stated that it has stopped filing lawsuits against alleged illegal file-sharers, about 100 cases are still pending where the defendant has filed an answer, about a dozen of which are being actively litigated in the discovery stage. 

The RIAA and the major record labels won their case against TENENBAUM earlier in the day, reports blogger BEN SHEFFNER. Judge NANCY GERTNER issued a directed order that TENENBAUM was guilty of copyright infringement after he admitted under oath THURSDAY that he had illegally downloaded music from the Internet.

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