Today, I checked my Yahoo email account which is an extremely rare occurrence. On Yahoo's homepage, my attention was automatically directed towards the headline, "Minnesota Mom Hit With $1.5 Million Fine for Downloading 24 Songs." You don't even have to read the article to recognize how over the top this is. This woman is being forced to pay $62,500 for each song which normally would cost $1 on iTunes. In my dorm building I can spy on other peoples' iTunes libraries who live near me. I remember coming across one person who had around 27,000 songs or so and I highly doubt that person spent $27,000 on those songs. Illegally downloading and sharing music online has become such a common way that people obtain their music nowadays, or so I thought. The fact that the government is suing this one woman for a mere 24 songs is a little crazy. There are so many worse offenders out there, but even besides that, file sharing websites such as Mediafire, Megaupload, Demonoid, and Limewire, which has recently been banned, are all accessible to anybody who has Internet access. I don't think making this woman take the brunt of this popular way of obtaining music is going to solve anything.
Also, I find it pretty hilarious that this is "the public face of the record industry's battle with illegal downloaders." Really? Maybe it's just me, but when I hear about somebody illegally downloading music from the Internet, I picture a broke college student like myself, not a soccer-mom of four from Minnesota.
http://new.music.yahoo.com/blogs/amplifier/148/minnesota-mom-hit-with-15-million-fine-for-downloading-24-songs/
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