The RIAA's case against Jammie Thomas, now Jammie Thomas-Rasset, is set to begin today. The case originally ended with Thomas-Rasset being found guilty in 2007 of 24counts of copyright infringement and ordered to pay $222,000 in damages, or $9,250 per song. However, the judge in the case ordered a mistrial, saying he had erred in part of his jury instructions.Thus, we rewind back to the start of the only case in the history of the RIAA's file sharing lawsuits to come to trial. One might have hoped that the RIAA would decide to give up, particularly with their change in direction late last year: they are no longer suing people, but rather are pursuing a three-strikes policy of sorts with ISPs, whereby file sharers will be cut off. At least, that's their plan of record, though it doesn't seem to be working out that way.
The error in jury instructions was noted last September, when the original judge in the case, U.S. District Judge Michael Davis stated he was incorrect when he told jurors that the record companies didn't have to show that anyone downloaded the copyright-protected songs Thomas-Rasset allegedly made available. He later concluded the law requires that actual distribution be shown.
This, in fact, is probably not going to stand up as a loophole. There's plenty of evidence to show that that RIAA's investigative firm Media Sentry was able to access the files via the IP address that was supposedly assigned to Thomas-Rasset's computer via her ISP. Unless she can prove IP spoofing (and that's probably not going to fly), we are likely to see the same verdict.
On the other hand, that fine still seems egregious to me. We'll see what this jury decides.
1 comments:
As if they would ever collect near a quarter million dollars plus court costs.
Ridiculous.
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