Single Mother Accused Of Illegally Downloading OPETH, GUNS N' ROSES Music Fights Back In Court

October 3, 2007

Times Online reports that a single mother who is accused of illegally downloading tracks from OPETH and GUNS N' ROSES, among other artists, has made legal history by forcing America’s biggest record companies into a costly and potentially embarrassing trial after she refused to pay an out-of-court settlement for alleged music piracy.

Jammie Thomas, a Native American from Minnesota, is one of 26,000 people the Recording Industry Association of America has sued over the past four years for alleged use of music "file-sharing" software. But she is the first to refuse to settle and has forced the music industry into a trial that could set a legal precedent. "I refuse to be bullied," she said yesterday. "I know that I did not do this, and the jury will hear that I did not do this."

Thomas, 30, who has two children aged 11 and 13, lives in the small northern town of Brainerd, Minnesota, and works for the Department of Natural Resources of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, a Native American tribe. According to the tribe's website, its members "struggled with poverty and despair" until the opening of two casinos in the 1990s.

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