Theives at the US Department of Justice and the RIAA stole 220,000.00 from a woman accused of "downloading 24 songs from Kazaa", when after inspecting the hard drive, they found nothing, and could not identify her as the person behind the keyboard when the downloads happened.  This is sheer lunacy and requires anyone who has a conscience to STOP BUYING ANYTHING PRODUCED BY THE RIAA. Read the original article at Wired that talks all about it.

Jammie Thomas, a single mother of two, was found liable Thursday for copyright infringement  in the nation's first file-sharing case to go before a jury.

Twelve jurors here said the Minnesota woman must pay $9,250 for each of 24 shared songs that were the subject of the lawsuit, amounting to $222,000 in penalties.

They could have dinged her for up to $3.6 million in damages, or awarded as little as $18,000. She was found liable for infringing songs from bands such as Journey, Green Day, AFI, Aerosmith and others.

In proving liability, the industry did not have to demonstrate that the defendant's computer had a file-sharing program installed at the time that they inspected her hard drive. And the RIAA did not have to show that the defendant was at the keyboard when RIAA investigators accessed Thomas' share folder.

Also, the judge in the case ruled that jurors may find copyright infringement liability against somebody solely for sharing files on the internet. The RIAA did not have to prove that others downloaded the files. That  was a big bone of contention that U.S. District Judge Michael Davis settled in favor of the industry.

Update: Nov 10, 2007: A website that is attempting to bait the RIAA and Apple against the DMCA is set up at PlasticBugs where this guy has downloaded a silent song from iTunes and has removed the Copy Protection, and is allowing others to download it.  IT is a pretty funny attempt to bait the big dogs.. let's see if they will bite at this song, which is complete silence.  First of all, WTF why is this file even available for purchase?