Filesharer fined $1.9m by US court

A 32-year-old mother has been fined $1.92 million (£1.17 million) for making 24 songs available for download on a filesharing network.

In a retrial, the Minnesota jury found that Jammie Thomas-Rasset had wilfully violated copyright by sharing songs by artists including Green Day, Sheryl Crow and Gloria Estefan, The AP reports

The record companies that sued Thomas-Rasset, which included subsidiaries of Warner, UMG, EMI and Sony, were awarded $80,000 for each song made available to the Kazaa network.

Thomas-Rasset of Brainerd, Minnesota, said: "There's no way they're ever going to get that. I'm a mum, limited means, so I'm not going to worry about it now."

The case is the first of around 30,000 lawsuits to make it to trial, with many others settled out-of-court for around $3,500.

Prosecutors originally accused Thomas-Rasset of making 1,700 songs available but only sought to prove the case for 24 songs for the sake of simplicity.

The industry claims that it stopped filing such lawsuits last August and is now working alongside internet service providers to tackle the worst filesharing offenders.