May 16, 2008
A Retrial for the RIAA's Only Successful Suit?
Last October the Recording Industry Association of America achieved a huge victory when alleged file sharer Jammie Thomas was ordered to pay $222,000 for music piracy. But persistent legal questions—about whether simply making a song available for others to copy is an act of infringement—have opened that case up to the possibility of a new trial.
Courts have come to different conclusions on “making available” argument: Some have said that making a song available on one’s computer for download does constitute infringement, while others have decided that an unauthorized download must be proven to have occurred as a result of the song’s being made available. In the Jammie Thomas case, which is the first and only music-sharing case to go to a jury trial, the judge specifically instructed the jury that if Ms. Thomas had made songs available, she had committed copyright infringement.
Now it turns out, however, that this instruction conflicted with a binding precedent from the same court. Yesterday the district judge said he may have committed “a manifest error of law” in his jury instructions that would require a new trial.
This may hold huge implications for student file sharers threatened with lawsuits. While the RIAA concentrates its efforts on catching students sharing music, it has acknowledged that it has no way of telling if a student (or other user) is making an illegal download. It can only tell when users have made music available for others to download. —Catherine Rampell
Posted on Friday May 16, 2008 | Permalink |Commenting is closed for this article.
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