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”.