$1.92 million fine charged on a woman for illegal online music trading

On Thursday, a jury ordered a woman, who won a retrial after a US$220,000 verdict against her for sharing music files, to pay $1.92 million ($80,000 for each of the 24 songs). She is accused of illegally trading over the Kazaa Internet service.

In 2007, when she lost the original suit, Jammie Thomas-Rasset, , was one of the first people to receive a guilty verdict in a case backed by the Recording Industry Association of America.

Thomas' case has been closely followed, in part because she was a single parent of two children and did not appear to be trading massive volumes of music.

Late last year the RIAA, which has filed more than 20,000 lawsuits against people in a bid to stop online music trading and copyright infringement, said it would no longer pursue individuals who trade in small numbers of songs. Instead it pledged to first notify ISPs of people who trade large volumes of songs and ask for the ISPs' help in putting an end to the activity.