Jammie Thomas, who has been dubbed “the world’s dumbest filesharer”, is still making headlines as we move into the New Year. Jammie Thomas was the first person to take a filesharing case to court. She got stung to the tune of $220,000 last year, largely thanks to a disastrous effort by her lawyer, Brian Toder.

Toder’s inspired idea to persuade Jammie Thomas to take her case to court resulted in near bankruptcy for the poor woman, who now woes the days she spent using filesharing service Kazaa. Toder has now decided to part ways with Jammie.

Although still a long way off reaching a worthwhile sum, Jammie Thomas is still selling thongs on her official website. Filesharing advocates have been slow off the mark to help Jammie out – in the past nine weeks, her online store has only raised $1,189.57.

Hopefully, Jammie will have a change of fortunes now that her bonehead attorney has gone his own way.

One brave man from Scottsdale has decided to take on the music industry. Jeffrey Howell is alleged to have shared about 2,000 songs through filesharing service Kazaa. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is demanding $40,000 from this part-time cab driver.

Howell claims that he didn’t realize his files were being shared with the Internet. All of the songs he is alleged to have shared were from his personal CD collection, which he downloaded to his computer. The case began in 2006 and will recommence January 24.

Although he claims he wasn’t filesharing, Howell admitted that he did have a Kazaa account. Some 20,000 people have been targeted by the RIAA for filesharing crimes since 2000. The Howell case achieved some media attention when it was reported that the RIAA was targeting people who download their CD collections to their hard drives.

The RIAA has since denied the allegations and said that it is just going after people who engage in illegal filesharing. Although he maintains his innocence, it’s almost certain that Howell will fail as he goes toe to toe with the RIAA.

Omemo has been launched for a couple of weeks now and already the new filesharing service has attracted a lot of media attention. The system is currently in Beta, but is worth downloading to see what all the filesharing fuss is about.

Omemo is easy to use – you share files by uploading them to the network and then browsing through what other people have been uploading. The filesharing interface works in your web browser and you can look through video, audio, software and images. Omemo is still fairly new so the limited number of users means that there are a limited numbers of files available for sharing.

The music downloads are easy to manage and reasonably fast. Everything is user-generated so you can create new folders and categories for files on the network, although it’s unclear how this is all regulated.

In terms of music downloads, Omemo is yet to establish itself as a real player in the filesharing world. It will take time to increase the user base, although what Omemo has at the moment is a simple program that is easy to use. There is search functionality so you can get straight down to filesharing and find what you want.

A new filesharing program called Omemo was launched this week. Omemo works by users downloading the software and then allocating a small section of their hard drives to be used in the Omemo network. This creates a huge virtual hard drive for of material that people can then share.

This latest filesharing service is similar to other programs like Limewire and so it’s difficult to see how it will be any different to its filesharing relatives. The service is free to use and there is a lot of expectation of Omemo.

Omemo is currently in Beta and is available for free download. The program was launched on December 17 and there is very little information available about it on the net, but after a few days’ worth of testing, reports on the service will start popping up on the Internet.

Omemo is worth a try and the service is, according the developers, totally anonymous.

So there is a god. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), who we love dearly, finally saw sense and dropped its lawsuit against the granny who had suffered enormously at the hands of Hurricane Rita. Unfortunately, it wasn’t Christmas spirit that made the RIAA see sense in this latest filesharing lawsuit.

Granny Crain had previously claimed that she had never used filesharing services and that she had had her home displaced by the hurricane. That wasn’t enough to deter the RIAA. The case would have continued by for a counter-claim by Granny Crain that the RIAA had played dirty by sending an unlicensed investigator to snoop on the old lady.

MediaSentry, hired by the RIAA, is apparently not allowed to investigate people in Texas – not even in filesharing cases for the mighty RIAA Vs The People. The RIAA is now shaken as it could potentially lose a number of filesharing cases based on this ruling. The RIAA has likely dropped its case out of fear that if MediaSentry snooping is ruled illegal in this lawsuit, a host of other filesharing cases will fall apart – we can but hope.

Granny Crain had been accused of using the filesharing services Kazaa. Demands to settle out of court for $4,500 were rejected by the pensioner.

The RIAA also suffered a setback in a filesharing case when Tanya Andersen and her 10-year-old daughter left the RIAA on the ropes after more claims against MediaSentry investigations. The RIAA stalked and hounded Anderson for three years, but it appears that there is some justice in the world.

Remember Jammie Thomas? Yeah, you know, the woman taken to court by six large record label for making music available for people to share on the Internet. Well, get this: she’s not only been found guilty, but she’s been ordered to pay $220,000 in compensation. $220,000!

Thomas was fined $9,250 for every song she illegally made available on her Kazzaa account, which she said she didn’t own in her defense. She was found guilty of sharing 24 songs, although what these songs are was undisclosed. Apparently she shared some 1,702 songs in all.

The lowest she could have been made to pay was $750 per song, so you can be sure that they are trying to make an example out this poor woman with the massive amount of money they’ve called her out for.

This is a landmark ruling, and it’s one that’s sure to send ripples through the music industry. Are we to all live in fear now that the record labels are starting to bite back? This is just the beginning, and you can be sure that more cases will follow.

What’s big news here is the excessive amount of money Jammie Thomas has to pay. The 24 songs are worth, what, $24? Thomas did the same as millions of people around the world do every day.

The world has gone mad.