The Recording Industry Association of America won a critical battle in the fight against digital piracy on Thursday. A federal jury found a Minnesota mom guilty of sharing copyright-protected music online and decided $220,000 was fair recompense to the record labels.

The plaintiffs, which include Virgin Records, Sony BMG, Capitol Records, Arista Records, Warner Bros., UMG Recordings, and Interscope Records, claimed Thomas distributed 1,702 copyrighted audio files on file-sharing network Kazaa in 2005.

The precedent-setting case is part of the RIAA's campaign against file-sharing piracy. The RIAA has launched more than 20,000 lawsuits since it set out on its zero-tolerance campaign to stop digital piracy in September 2003. Some suits settled out of court. Others were dismissed. This was the first time a case went before a jury.

Sending a Message

The jury ordered Jammie Thomas, 30, to pay the plaintiffs $9,250 for each of the 24 songs highlighted in the case. The RIAA was asking for as much as $3.9 million dollars, plus legal fees.

The trial saw two days of testimony from 11 witnesses. The defense did not call any witnesses to the stand. Brian Toder, Thomas' attorney, tried to cast doubt on whether the record companies could actually prove Thomas downloaded and shared music over Kazaa.

Under oath, Thomas denied a folder on the Kazaa network belonged to her. But experts testified that the Internet address used by "tereastarr," the name of the Kazaa user who infringed, belonged to Thomas.

"This decision sends the message that theft is theft and piracy is piracy," said Carole Handler, vice chair of the Intellectual Property Litigation Practice at Foley & Lardner, a firm that specializes in new media, entertainment, and copyright law. "Just because it's not popular for large entities to sue individuals doesn't mean that what copyright infringers are doing is right or that they are going to get away with it."

Opening the Floodgates

The victory will certainly encourage the RIAA, but it may or may not open the floodgates for similar jury trials, according to legal experts. Even with a precedent in place, trials are expensive for all parties and judge and jury sympathies might be divided.

Ultimately, Handler said, one can't be sure how a jury will react. As a trial lawyer, though, she said this type of victory would embolden her. It might also scare infringers. RIAA's targets might be more likely to settle, she said, because they realize they might lose in court.

"In this case, the RIAA wasn't dealing with Bonnie and Clyde; they were dealing with a mother who was sharing music with neighbors from an isolated location on an Indian reservation in northern Minnesota," Handler said. "That's not exactly the entertainment capital of the country."

The difficulty for the RIAA is that it's still very unpopular for the organization to be suing individuals, she added. "A victory like this one indicates the point they have been trying to make," Handler concluded. "The law is the law and if you break the law you run the risk of getting caught and having to pay the consequences."