The most expensive music in the world.

This falls into two main categories; Things that don't make sense and Only in America.

In the first US trial to challenge the illegal downloading of music on the Internet, a single mother from Minnesota was ordered Thursday to pay 220,000 dollars for sharing 24 songs online.

This is absurd.

Don't get me wrong, she committed a crime by pirating this music and the reason she got busted whilst others won their cases is because she was clearly not naive since she swapped harddrives on the machine. The REAL issue here is the ridiculous $220,000 USD fine she was charged. She earns $40,000 is a single mother and has NO real chance of paying it. Let me put the size of this fine in perspective with other crimes and their penalties.

Drink driving - the third and subsequent time you're caught drink driving a 1 tonne killing machine, you will get charged upto 5050$.

Vehicular Manslaughter - A 15,000$ USD fine is the highest amount you can get charged for this typically.

3rd degree assault - $10,000

Kidnapping - Maximum penalty is $50,000.

Outright Piracy - Hell, a man who sold pirated physical cds and profited from it got 1 yrs jail and a 1000$ fine.

That said, those were criminal cases, while I believe this woman's case is a civil case which should really be relabelled 'capitalist bastard cases'. Considering this is about the same as stealing two CDs, this lady should have really got arrested for theft and she would have got some community service and a slap on the wrist fine. Everyone knows this was less about justice and more about making a point to the community at large that file-sharing is not going to be tolerated in a court of law. You'd think they'd fine someone who could afford it, but then again if she could afford it, she would have got better lawyers.

What a f&*$$d up society.