SAN ANTONIO, March 4 (UPI) -- A Texas woman lost an appeal of a trial court's ruling she was liable for illegally downloading music, which may cost her $40,000, her lawyer said.
Whitney Harper, 22, of San Antonio, said she was 14 or 16 at the time, and was too young and naive to know that what she was doing was illegal, the San Antonio Express-News reported Thursday.
An appellate panel dismissed her arguments, saying that copyright infringement warnings were in place when the music was recorded, and ruled Harper must pay a total of $27,750 to five music producing companies -- $750 per song -- for 37 copyrighted songs she obtained through Web sites, the newspaper said. The total with interest could be more than $40,000.
Harper is one of the few people to challenge the recording industry's lawsuits against people who download copyrighted music, the Express-News said.
"I visited those sites and from viewing the Web pages of those sites, I understood Kazaa (one of the Web sites) and similar products to be legitimate music sites that allowed a person to listen to music on their computer. Many of these sites advertised that this was 100 percent free and 100 percent legal, which I had no reason to doubt," an affidavit of Harper's read.
