Court Orders Graduate Student To Pay Nearly $700,000 For Downloading Just 30 Songs Illegally

August 3, 2009 9:28 a.m. EST

New York, NY (AHN) - A judge has ordered a graduate student to pay a total of $675,000 after he was found guilty of illegally downloading songs from a shared music Web site.

Joel Tenenbaum, the 25-year-old Boston University student, has pleaded guilty of the charges of downloading and distributing 30 songs.

He will be paying $22,500 per song to four record labels for willfully infringing on the copyright of the songs by bands, including Green Day, Incubus, Nirvana and Aerosmith.

The U.S. District Court jury could have ordered him to pay a maximum of $4.5 million in the case.

"We are grateful for the jury's service and their recognition of the impact of illegal downloading on the music community," a statement from the Recording Industry Association of America said yesterday.

"We appreciate that Tenenbaum finally acknowledged that artists and music companies deserve to be paid for their work. From the beginning, that's what this case has been about. We only wish he had done so sooner rather than lie about his illegal behavior," it added.

The recording companies are entitled for fines of up to $750 to $30,000 per infringement under the U.S. copyright law.

It is the second such case to go to trial in the U.S.

In July, a woman in Minneapolis was ordered to pay $1.92 million. Jammie Thomas-Rasse was fined $80,000 per song for copyright infringement for sharing 24 songs.