Ars Technica is reporting that the RIAA has won its first jury trail.

After just four hours of deliberation and two days of testimony, a jury found that Jammie Thomas was liable for infringing the record labels’ copyrights on all 24 the 24 recordings at issue in the case of Capitol Records v. Jammie Thomas. The jury awarded $9,250 in statutory damages per song, after finding that the infringement was “willful,” out of a possible total of $150,000 per song. The grand total? $222,000 in damages.

A jury made the decision that Thomas was guilty, but the amount per recording seems like cruel and unusual punishment to me. I hope Thomas can afford to appeal the verdict.
[tags]riaa,copyright[/tags]