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August 04, 2008, 02:52 PM ET
A New Trial for Jammie Thomas?
One of the Recording Industry Association of America’s most symbolically important legal victories—its first and only win over a piracy suspect in a jury trial—is on the line today in a Minnesota courtroom, according to Wired‘s Threat Level blog.
Ten months ago a Duluth jury ordered alleged song swapper Jammie Thomas to pay $222,000 for sharing 24 copyrighted songs. The victory legitimized the RIAA’s legal strategy of pursuing individual file-sharing suspects, and it seemed likely to dissuade some other defendants from bringing their cases to court.
But in May, Michael Davis, the district-court judge who heard the civil case, raised the possibility of a mistrial. Mr. Davis said he may have erred in telling the jury that Ms. Thomas was liable for copyright infringement as long as she was “making copyrighted sound recordings available” on KaZaA, no matter if the RIAA could prove that other network users had actually downloaded any of the tunes. That instruction appears to conflict with a binding precedent from the same court, so Mr. Davis called today’s hearing to examine whether the case should be reheard.
For the RIAA, today’s hearing is about a lot more than just the $222,000 owed by Ms. Thomas. The trade group can seldom, if ever, furnish proof that particular songs have been downloaded illegally, so it certainly hopes that the standard of proof lies where Mr. Davis initially told the jury it did.—Brock Read
Categories: Campus-Piracy, Legal-Troubles
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