Convicted File-Sharer Applied to US Supreme Court

Jammie Thomas-Rasset, mother of 4 children, was finally found guilty of unauthorized downloading and sharing 24 music tracks and is now demanded to pay a fine of $220,000 to the Recording Industry Association of America. Jammie Thomas-Rasset has repeatedly tried to reduce the penalties, but with little success. Now she has decided to turn her pleads to the Supreme Court of the United States.




Thomas-Rasset’s legal representatives have recently filed a petition where they ask for the Supreme Court to turn their attention to the extremely exaggerated fine (almost $10,000 per file). The petition says that this is unfair at the very least – indeed, it is not due process for an entertainment industry to sue 12,500 file-sharers and threaten to sue 5,000 more just because the industry members wield a statute for which they lobbied and under which they are able to threaten hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in statutory damages. In the meanwhile, the only way to resist this pressure is via modern, complex, and expensive federal process. As a result, most people turn to the only reasonable choice of to pay the settlement and be done.

For some reason, the Supreme Court of the United States hasn’t been interested in file-sharing cases thus far. Anyway, Jammie Thomas-Rasset isn’t backing down: as a matter of fact, two years ago she managed to reduce the penalties from $1.5 million to $54,000. However, this was after a couple of other trials where the fine went up to almost $2 million. But in the end the Recording Industry Association of America appealed and won the case last year, demanding Jammie to pay the $220,000.

Of course, it is unlikely for the Supreme Court to get involved, but the file-sharing mom can’t be blamed for trying to fight an abusive system which forces people to pay up to $80,000 per each case of infringement.