Jammie Thomas takes the stand, admits to major misstep; Ars Technica, 6/16/09

Nate Anderson via Ars Technica; Jammie Thomas takes the stand, admits to major misstep:

"Did she do it? That's for the jury to decide. But the bigger question is whether the process itself—the threat of life-altering damage awards, the hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, the time and exposure of a federal trial—is truly a proportional, equitable response to online copyright infringement?

Not even the judge who must preside over this case believes that the answer to that question is "yes." Writing an unusually pointed order granting Thomas-Rasset a new trial last year, Judge Michael Davis, Chief Justice of the Minnesota District Court, wrote these extraordinary words:

While the Court does not discount Plaintiffs’ claim that, cumulatively, illegal downloading has far‐reaching effects on their businesses, the damages awarded in this case are wholly disproportionate to the damages suffered by Plaintiffs. Thomas allegedly infringed on the copyrights of 24 songs—the equivalent of approximately three CDs, costing less than $54, and yet the total damages awarded is $222,000—more than five hundred times the cost of buying 24 separate CDs and more than four thousand times the cost of three CDs. While the Copyright Act was intended to permit statutory damages that are larger than the simple cost of the infringed works in order to make infringing a far less attractive alternative than legitimately purchasing the songs, surely damages that are more than one hundred times the cost of the works would serve as a sufficient deterrent...

The Court would be remiss if it did not take this opportunity to implore Congress to amend the Copyright Act to address liability and damages in peer‐ to‐peer network cases such as the one currently before this Court. The Court begins its analysis by recognizing the unique nature of this case. The defendant is an individual, a consumer. She is not a business. She sought no profit from her acts... The Court does not condone Thomas’s actions, but it would be a farce to say that a single mother’s acts of using Kazaa are the equivalent, for example, to the acts of global financial firms illegally infringing on copyrights in order to profit...

Despite his opinion, Davis may well preside over another guilty verdict this week; if so, he won't be able to throw it out thanks to a "making available" jury instruction this time around—a fact that perhaps accounts for his perpetual grumpy frown during the trial."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/06/jammie-thomas-takes-the-stand-admits-to-major-misstep.ars

Music cos. vow to show Minn. woman shared 24 songs; Associated Press, 6/15/09

Steve Karnowski via Associated Press; Music cos. vow to show Minn. woman shared 24 songs:

"This case remains the only one out of more than 30,000 similar lawsuits the industry has filed that has made it to trial. The vast majority of the other defendants settled for an average of about $3,500 rather than risk huge judgments and legal bills. [Jammie] Thomas-Rasset's first lawyer put in nearly $130,000 worth of time for which she couldn't pay. Her new lawyers, [Kiwi] Camara and Joe Sibley, of Houston, took the case for free.

Thomas-Rasset lost her first trial in 2007 when jurors awarded the companies $222,000. But U.S. District Judge Michael Davis later concluded he made a mistake in his jury instructions and ordered the retrial.

This time, Davis is expected to instruct the jurors the record companies need to prove that someone actually downloaded the music Thomas-Rasset allegedly made available over the Internet on the Kazaa file sharing service. Last time, he told the jury the plaintiffs didn't have to prove anyone downloaded the copyright-protected songs.

The companies suing are subsidiaries of all four major recording companies, Warner Music Group Corp., Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group, EMI Group PLC and Sony Corp.'s Sony Music Entertainment.

Thomas, a mother of four and employee of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe tribal government, allegedly used Kazaa, a "peer-to-peer" file sharing service in which users make files on their own computers available for downloading by other users. Although the industry contends she made more than 1,700 songs available, for simplicity's sake it's trying to prove copyright violations on just a representative sample of only 24, including songs by Gloria Estefan, Sheryl Crow, Green Day and Journey."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h5cPHcxNbw61wli6CVCczuXJYgyQD98RETQG0

Jury selected in Thomas retrial: shockingly law-abiding; Ars Technica, 6/15/09

Nate Anderson via Ars Technica; Jury selected in Thomas retrial: shockingly law-abiding:

"After tossing out four jurors (the ones who had the most experience with file-sharing friends), the court was left with a 12-person jury: five men and seven women, all white, ranging in age from college students to retirees...

[Judge Michael J. Davis] displayed a list of songs that Thomas-Rasset was alleged to have shared online, which was the morning's most unintentionally poignant moment. Thomas-Rasset had earlier been ordered to pay $222,000 for such aural splendors as "Pour Some Sugar on Me," "Now and Forever," "Hella Good," "Bills, Bills, Bills," and "Don't Stop Believin'"—which may have been the real crime in the first trial. (OK, "Don't Stop Believin'" may in fact have deserved the almost $10,000 in damages.)"

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/06/jury-selected-in-thomas-retrial-shockingly-law-abiding.ars