Back in October of 2007, a federal jury ruled in favor of the RIAA and fined the defendant, Jammie Thomas, an outrageous $220,000.00 US for sharing 24 songs on a P2P network. Not surprisingly, Ms. Thomas filed an appeal. Her case was indirectly strengthened when a New York federal judge ruled that the RIAA could not strictly sue individuals under the "making available" claim -- the argument that merely making a file available to download constitutes subjects the user to copyright infringement and punitive penalties -- they would have to prove the person actually downloaded said files. Yesterday, a Minnesota federal judge declared a mistrial in the Jammie Thomas case, effectively setting the RIAA's court victory record back to zero.

The basis of the mistrial were the jury instructions. Initially Judge Michael Davis instructed jurors that could find Thomas guilty of copyright infringement if copyrighted MP3s were made available via a peer-to-peer network, "regardless of whether actual distribution has been shown."

In August, Judge Davis had a change of heart and called both sides back to court, requesting arguments over the "make available" claim. With yesterday's decision, Jude Davis ruled that the jury instructions were "erroneous, and that error substantially prejudiced Thomas' rights."

Although a mistrial was declared, the case was not dismissed with prejudice, meaning the RIAA can sue Thomas on the same grounds, assuming they can make the argument that actual distribution, and that Thomas was responsible for infringing downloads.

On page 41 of the 44 page ruling, Judge Davis also commented on the extraordinary punitive damages in this case:
"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." We can only hope Congress listens.

The complete ruling can be downloaded here.



[via Tech Dirt]

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When we first heard about the RIAA's recent filesharing suit victory and the 220k dollar judgment against the user in question -- we thought, "You'd have to be mad to share enough songs to rack up a judgment that large."

Not so fast, jack. The offending copyright infringements totaled just 24--that's right, twenty-four copyright protected files on the user's drive. Breaking down to nearly 10 large per infringement; the defendant Jammie Thomas was hit square in the face with the book the court threw, wiping out her finances and sending her out of the courthouse literally in tears.

As an aside, we're left to wonder if the artists infringed upon could have generated the kind of revenue which would make such an enormous judgment possible if it weren't for the enthusiasm demonstrated by fans like Jammie. After all, a business needs its customers and, like it or not, rabid filesharers are also some of music's biggest fans, and the recording industry's bread and butter.

Nevertheless, Jammie, a MySpace user, has apparently raised nearly a thousand bucks to fund her appeal of the case, courtesy of her MySpace friends. She's also receiving funds from her Native American tribe, but not nearly enough to match the might of the RIAA, whose pockets have grown deep through record sales and insanely lopsided settlement agreements.

Declan McCullough of CNET wrote that the jury instructions given before deliberation may have been slanted in favor of a heavy statutory damage claim, as high as a hundred grand per incident. Is it just us, or does this kind of onesie-twosie infringement seem like it should be covered by a different set of fines? You can get a DUI with children in the car and still get off cheaper than Jammie Thomas did.