UPDATE: Illegal Downloader Slammed to Tune of $675k

Image by arcticpenguin via Flickr

Twenty-five-year-old BU grad student Joel Tenenbaum of Providence, R.I., has been ordered by a Massachusetts jury to pay four record companies $675,000 in total for downloading 30 copyrighted songs in 2004 through the KaZaA peer-to-peer network.

Tenenbaum, only the second defendant in a music downloading case ever to go to trial in the nation, could have faced a judgment of up to $4.5 million under the copyright statute for willful infringement, rather than the $22,500 for each of the 30 tunes. (See "TUOL" post 7/28/09.) Tenenbaum's legal team, headed by Harvard Law Prof. Charles Nesson, is expected to appeal the verdict based on U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts Judge Nancy Gertner's ruling that precluded "fair use" as a defense.

The case is (Capitol Records, Inc. v. Noor Alaujan, Case No. 03-cv-11661; Sony BMG Music Entertainment et al. v. Joel Tenenbaum, Case No. 07-cv-114446).