It’s official - George Bush supports the RIAA’s steep penalties for file-sharing.

Jamie Thomas, a middle-class Minnesota mom, has been ordered to pay Capitol Records $222,000 for making 24 songs available on Kazaa, a peer-to-peer file-sharing program.

Capitol v. Thomas is one of the highest-profile instances of the Recording Industry Association of America suing individual citizens for allegedly using peer file-sharing programs. It’s also the first case of file-sharing litigation to actually make it to trial.

The US Department of Justice recently filed documents to defend the constitutionality of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act  which was designed to enforce copyright law in the digital realm, including MP3s. The legislation has been vigorously used by the RIAA to sue individual citizens and subpoena logs from Internet Service Providers.

Thomas’ defense is centered on Supreme Court precedent that prohibits fines that are unreasonable, disproportionate to the offense or severely oppressive.

The Department of Justice has been known to move in when it sees a threat to statutes enacted by Congress. It’s charged with the defense of the Constitution even where an individual case may not survive judicial scrutiny in the individual court where it is tried.

Jamie Thomas, has vowed to fight on and to "be a thorn in the side of the recording companies." You can read her personal blog on MySpace.com.

Tags: Blu-ray

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 6th, 2007 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.