RIAA spends thousands to obtain $300 judgment

What's the cost of file-sharing? For Terri Frye of Hickory, NC, it was $300. That's the amount she'll have to pay the RIAA after agreeing to a judgment in a file-sharing case. Frye is a single mother living in state-supported housing who received one of the RIAA's settlement letters in November 2005.

Despite contacting Frye in late 2005, the RIAA did not actually file suit until March of this year. In the intervening period, Frye repeatedly informed the RIAA that they had the wrong person.

The end result is that the RIAA likely spent thousands of dollars to obtain a $300 judgment. And although Frye agrees to be enjoined against future copyright infringement, she does not admit to any wrongdoing.

MediaSentry flagged 706 songs on the computer that became the basis for the lawsuit, and at $750 per song, that works out to a total of $529,500. The RIAA settled for a minuscule fraction of that number, one curiously close to the 70¢-per-track figure a record industry attorney said is close to the labels' share of each track sold.