Maybe they'll give her a payment plan: Why would a 36K a year mom take on the RIAA (and vice versa)?

I recently read that some people think groups with anti-copyright agendas might be leading Jammie Thomas down the road she has recently found herself on.

A story on c|net’s News.com nailed why some might be suspicious:

“The question came up last week shortly after Thomas was ordered by a federal
jury to pay the record industry more than $220,000 for violating copyright law.
Why would a 30-year-old mother of two, who makes $36,000 a year, want to go
toe-to-toe with the recording industry.”- Greg Sandoval, news.com.

Although it really doesn’t make any sense, Thomas is going it alone. She’s claiming that no one is telling her what to do in this case; she insists this was her idea, what she wanted to do.

I’m not buying it, especially since the article said that her appeal is going to be supported by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) via a “friend-of-the-court” brief.

All in all I don’t know who I agree with in the case. I mean, upwards of $200,000 for downloading songs? That seems a bit steep. But at the same time, I do not support file sharing.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve downloaded music, hell I still do sometimes, but I download one song here or there, rather than entire albums, and if the RIAA looked at what I’d downloaded, they’d laugh.

I download one-hit-wonder kind of stuff, I have “Informer” by Snow; “Land down under” by Men at Work; and “Rock me Amadeus” by Falco.

My point is even if I was going to be an honest consumer and buy three different albums just for three different songs; I probably couldn’t find two of the three albums. That is what I use file sharing for.

Other than that, I think file sharing is wrong. I’m sorry if you cant afford the album, but guess what, radio is still free.