Lawsuits are not supposed to be fines or deterrents. They are supposed to be a way to be compensated for money, property, or time that you lost due to someone else’s actions. Compensatory damages are supposed to be limited to what you can actually prove the person you are suing cost you… in this case, 99 cents per song downloaded plus 99 cents for each copy they can prove she distributed. There are also punitive damages possible, which are generally limited to some multiple of the compensatory damages (or at least should be). However, even at punitive damages of 10 times the compensatory damages (which would be HIGH in a non-IP related case) and assuming she seeded to a ration of 10 (yeah, right…) that’s only around $2400.

An actual fine could be much higher, and could indeed be designed primarily as a deterrent. However, that’s CRIMINAL law, not civil… such fines would have to be implemented by Congress and imposed by a criminal court, not a lawsuit. Civil law isn’t there to make examples of people, it’s there to recover real damages.

Let’s assume every upload is a lost sale, for sake of easy math (the economist in me weeps at this assumption, but whatever).

Assume a 5 Megabyte MP3
Assume a standard, residential 768kbps upload (may have been lower back then. I know the cable I had then was only 512kbps upload)
Assume 100% utilization (bullshit) and zero overhead (more bullshit).
Assume every upload was one of the affected songs.

That’s about 52 seconds to upload 1 song.
About 70 songs an hour.

So, at maximum utilization, that’s up to 600k downloads in a year’s time. Between everything she was seeding.

Maximum utilization does not happen in a home setting. No one runs that 24/7 (it would make actually surfing the internet borderline impossible), and of course, that assumes a constant supply of downloaders, which doesn’t happen long term.

Zero overhead, not gonna happen. Bittorrent is pretty efficient though, so the most easily disprovable assumption is probably the closest to reality.

Each upload being one of the songs is damn unlikely.

As for every upload being a lost sale, you can debunk that with the tools provided by Economics 101 before the end of the first week (2nd week if it’s a slow class).

So, lets assume 10% utilization, even downloads among all 1702 songs, 10% overhead, and she’s shared each song with. . . about 30 people.

They’d fine you less for just outright walking into a record store, stealing 30 albums and then handing them out.