$1.92 Million Steal of 2007

In 2007, Jamie Thomas-Rasset, a mother of two from Minnesota, was found guilty of copyright infringement by illegally downloading and sharing 1,700 songs on Kazaa. The verdict of the trial in Duluth, MN, ordered Thomas-Rasset to pay the RIAA $220,000 in damages.
20 months later, June 19, 2009, she was trialed again after the federal court ruled her previous verdict as a mistrial because of a faulty jury instruction. Accused of sharing merely 24 song (as opposed to the attested 1,700) on P2P networks, Thomas-Rasset is now looking at a whopping $1.92 million fine (each song representing $80,000 in damages) to both the RIAA and four major record labels. However, neither labels nor RIAA expect to receive the entire amount from Thomas-Rasset and are expecting another case for repeal. According to Billboard Magazine, the RIAA's goal of this lawsuit from day one was to exhibit the extent of their power to control illegal file-sharing and the critical toll that results from undermining the Copyright Act.
The shocking $1.92 million verdict however, was a potential double the value. The Copyright Act awards $150,000 per work in cases of willful infringement. But the Copyright Act was never employed to such extent before this recent case and now perceived to be too excessive on realistic terms. Therefore, there may be a legislative move in reducing the cost of copyright infringement.

In response to the verdict of the Trial:

Despite the legality of the verdict and the intention to scare people from illegal downloading, I can't help but pity the poor woman and think that her charges were unfair. The reasons being, she was allegedly charged for sharing only 24 songs, songs from bands such as Gn'R, Led Zeppelin, and The Beatles, which are already popular downloads and easily accessible on the Internet. Also, her charges for this recent trial, happened almost two years ago, where she lost to that trial as well. Give her a break. She's a single mother of four from a random town in Minnesota. In the two years waiting for for retrial, couldn't the RIAA find anyone else guilty of copyright infringement? Or were they just so desperate to put a real face on this problem?