The RIAA has been awarded $675,000 in the case of Joel Tenenbaum, a student who illegally downloaded 30 songs. If the award stands, Tenenbaum will be filing for bankruptcy.

Since Tenenbaum had already admitted to infringement, the jury's instructions from the judge were to choose an amount between $750 and $150,000 per song. The student told Ars Technica: "I'm thankful that it wasn't much bigger, that it wasn't millions". And compared to another recent ruling, he may have gotten away lightly: in June, Jammie Thomas-Rasset was ordered to pay $80,000 for each of the 24 songs she downloaded, making for a total of $1.92 million.

There's no doubt that Tenenbaum broke the law, and appears to have continued to infringe copyright for years after receiving warnings and even after being sued. His lawyer's tactics, including the posting to his blog of audio recordings from the court, are said to have "infuriated the plaintiffs".

$22,500 Per Song: Excessive?

The question begging to be asked: how is a song worth $22,500? Given that most tracks sell for $0.99 in iTunes, a 100x multiple would put the fine at $99 per song. A 1000x multiple would lead to a fine of $990. You might say that it's comparable to being fined $100,000 for stealing a comic book, except that in this case it would be more like photocopying the comic and leaving the original on the shelf.

It's a question the judge is looking into, reports Ars Technica:

Judge Gertner previously announced that she will hold a post-trial proceeding to determine whether the size of the award violates the US Constitution’s guarantee of due process of the law. While no federal court has ever invalidated an award of copyright statutory damages as constitutionally excessive, the record labels’ litigation campaign has spurred arguments that the Supreme Court cases imposing limits on punitive damages should be extended to statutory damages, which may contain a punitive element.

If a song is worth $22,500, the record industry is truly giving us a bargain by selling them for $0.99 on iTunes.