BU grad student hit for $875K for illegal downloads

In a case heard before a jury and presided over by U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner in D Mass, Boston University grad student Joel Tenenbaum was ordered to pay $875,000 for illegal downloading. The student's attorney was Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson.

The AP story noted:

The music industry has typically offered to settle such cases for about $5,000, though it has said that it stopped filing such lawsuits last August and is instead working with Internet service providers to fight the worst offenders. Cases already filed, however, are proceeding to trial.

Tenenbaum testified that he had lied in pretrial depositions when he said his two sisters, friends and others may have been responsible for downloading the songs to his computer.

Under questioning from his own lawyer, Tenenbaum said he now takes responsibility for the illegal swapping.

The story did not say whether Tenenbaum would be charged with perjury.

The AP story alluded to a previous case involving HIGHER awarded damages: Jammie Thomas-Rasset, 32, must pay $1.92 million, or $80,000 on each of 24 songs, after concluding she willfully violated the copyrights on those tunes.

IPBiz had cover the Thomas-Rasset case