Tenenbaum Guilty: Faces Up to $4.5 Million in Fines for Downloading and Sharing Music

You can say all you want about the American legal system, but it certainly knows how to get down to business. Yes, when a 25-year-old graduate student has the audacity of downloading and sharing free music tracks, Lady Justice bears down with a massive, iron hammer. Thank you for stepping in when it really matters federal judge who found Joel Tenenbaum, a Boston University grad student, guilty of copyright law infringement. Thank you for ensuring the record label fat cats can afford one more tricked-out Bentley Continental GT and million-dollar piece of bling while this poor kid gets himself into a ridiculous amount of debt before he even starts his life. Thank you for putting my tax dollars to use.

I suppose what irks me about this case is not so much that they found him guilty for this common practice–that’s a debate for another day–but that he could owe the recording industry millions of dollars. He awaits word of monetary damages, which are scheduled to be handed down today. The damages hinge largely on whether the jury decides his actions were willful or not. If so, he could owe up to $150,000 per track to the four studios that brought the suit. The suit focuses on 30 specific tracks–so he could owe as much as $4.5 million. That’s quite a leap up in price from the $30 that he could have bought the tracks for. As far as the willful test goes–am I missing something here–do people log into their computer to find music randomly downloaded or forwarded to friends? Isn’t the act willful by definition?

While we wait to see the final outcome of this case, we should all ponder our own music practices and what it would mean to get caught up in a lawsuit like this. What do you think–fair verdict or example of the skewed justice system that rewards those with money and power at the expense of the average citizen? [via CNET] [Photo: gurdonark]