Thursday's verdict by a federal jury ordering a Minneapolis woman to pay $220,000 for illegally downloading and sharing copyrighted music online has the blogosphere buzzing today.

No wonder. The issue of sharing copyrighted songs for free via peer-to-peer networking has always aroused strong opinions and emotions. Penalizing a single mom nearly a quarter-million dollars only adds fuel to the fire.

Like most, I believe the dollar award is ridiculous. I also highly doubt that Jammie Thomas, the defendant, will have to pay anywhere near that amount. There likely will be an appeal, the six music companies that won the verdict may be willing to negotiate a smaller settlement, Thomas could declare bankruptcy, etc.

Here's a sampling of comments from the bloggers and readers:

"It is one of the most irrational things I have ever seen in my life in the law." -- New York attorney Ray Beckerman

"Sure, the music companies have the right to defend their interests, but fining a single, working mother more than she probably makes in five years is just vicious." -- Slashdot poster flyingsquid

"[T]the RIAA will take this as a validation of its "sue our fans" strategy, rather than realizing it's finally time to try a different model." -- Mike Masnick, Techdirt

"When you steal by file sharing, you're stealing from the song writers. Excuses, rationalizing, and hating the labels doesn't change this." -- CNET.com reader gearpig

Of course, there are many more strongly worded reactions out there, but you get the picture.

I have conflicting feelings about the entire issue because:

The music industry essentially is a bunch of thieves who constantly rip off artists and fans.

The notion that music should be free is, at bottom, selfish rationalizing. Musicians are workers and should be paid for what they produce. Really, it's not like being a blogger.

A lot of what recording artists produce is overpriced crap. But that's in part because they're forced to meet contractual requirements set by the rapacious music companies.

It seems as if they had the goods on Jammie Thomas, who maintained her innocence but whose Kazaa username matched one of her known email addresses.

The RIAA insists it only sues downloaders as a last resort. They've done it a scant 26,000 times.

Fortunately, there's a silver lining: The music companies will eagerly share the $220,000 (or whatever they end up collecting) with their artists.

Oh, wait a minute:

When the RIAA does sue individuals, any money it receives from settlements and judgments are generally reinvested into the group's antipiracy program, said Jonathan Lamy, an RIAA spokesman.

To quote the Talking Heads: Same as it ever was.