They can only fine her for the files for which she was on trial. It only serves to bias the jury to say that she had 17 gigs. If they were to sue her for having 3,000 files, the charge would be what? $117million? Might the jury have found the RIAA’s request a bit obsessive/punative?
I will say that I have not read the transcript but if they proved the case that she also acted as a “server” for other people that downloaded the songs then the high fine can be because of her roll in distribution.
Either way, to destroy this woman won't even put a blip in file trading across the world. Russia and China probably trade every song ever made by all artists every week. If you have P2P software, you are probably getting half the music from Poland or Russia. To make an example of this person is almost sick if even if you wanted to stop the practice. In America, most of the files are probably on 15 year old kids computers. Probably 10% of the parents care enough to look to see what their kids are doing. Probably 90% wouldn't know what P2P is anyway. So the RIAA has to go after the parents to collect anything.
I've thought about this for years and I honestly can't come up with a solution that is realistic. Code writers are 2 steps ahead of the music industry since the MP3 was invented. The only solution for the artist is to figure a new way to sell/rent/lease their music. Every security method is hacked before it comes out. If it can be put on disk, the disk can be reproduced. I don't know what the answer is. I do know That Russia and China are cheating us out of HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS in trade income. We buy oil, they steal our property. It would go a long way to balance our trade deficit if we got the money for our software, music, and movies. It's hard to get all weepy over Tom Cruise or the Dixie Chicks loosing money though.