Minnesota- Mother of four fined 1.5 Million for downloading songs

A Minnesota mother of four has been ordered to pay $1.5m for illegally downloading songs, including music by Sheryl Crow, Def Leppard and Journey.

Thomas-Rasset shared more than 1,700 songs on the file-sharing site Kazaa, but was only sued over 24 of them. Under federal law, the recording companies are entitled to $750 to $30,000 per infringement but the law allows the jury to raise that to as much as $150,000 per track if it finds the infringements were willful.

Rasset first went on trial. In 2007, during that trial jurors decided she willfully violated the copyrights on all 24 songs, and she was ordered to pay $9,250 per song, or $222,000. However the Judge in that case Chief U.S. District Judge Michael Davis ordered a retrial because he erred in giving instruction to the jurry.