In arriving at the decision the appellate court ruled that the damages of $9,250 per infringed song was neither unreasonable nor unconstitutional in the context of the case.

"We conclude that an award of $9,250 per each of 24 works is not 'so severe and oppressive as to be wholly disproportional to the offense'," appellate Judge Steven Colloton wrote, quoting from a previous Supreme Court ruling on the fairness of statutory damages.

This is the second time a court has come to a near identical conclusion in a music piracy case. In August, the U,S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts a fine of $675,000 assessed by a jury against a former Boston university doctoral student accused of pirating 30 songs.

The ruling this week is the latest twist in a multiyear saga involving Minnesota native Jammie Thomas-Rasset and six recording companies that have accused her of downloading and distributing a total of more than 1,700 songs. The copyright laws under which Thomas-Rasset was sued allow for statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringement.

The companies, which include Sony BMG, Arista Records and Warner Brothers, first sued Thomas-Rasset in 2006 using a representative sample of just 24 of those songs. Since then, the fight between the two sides has gone before three federal juries each one of which has arrived at slightly different decisions.