U.S. Supreme Court Asked To Handle “File-Sharing Mom” Case

[Guest HellYeah]

After being found guilty of illegally downloading and sharing 24 songs, Jammie Thomas-Rasset, mother of four children, is being forced to pay a fine of $220,000 to the RIAA. After repeatedly trying reduce the fine, the woman has finally decided to turn her pleads to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The lawyers representing Thomas-Rasset have filed a petition in which they ask for the Supreme Court to take into consideration the extremely exaggerated fine ($9,250 per file).

“This is not just. It is unfair, it is not due process, for an industry to sue 12,500 people and threaten to sue 5,000 more, wielding a statute for which they lobbied, under which they can threaten hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in statutory damages, where the only way to resist is through modern, complex, expensive federal process, so that the only reasonable choice is to pay the settlement and be done. That’s extortion, not law,” the brief reads.

Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court has kept its nose out of this business (read the file-sharing business) thus far.

Nevertheless, Jammie is not backing down. As a matter of fact, back in 2010 she managed to reduce the fine from $1,5 million to $54,000 (after two other trials where the fine went up to $1,92 million), but the RIAA appealed and won the case in 2011, having Jammie to pay the $220,000.

Although it’s not likely for the Supreme Court to get involved, we can’t blame Thomas-Rasset for trying to fight an abusive system that forces people to pay up to $80,000 per track.

Source: p2pon