Jury sides with record labels in file-sharing case

Stephen Withers
Friday, 05 October 2007 10:38

Your IT - Home IT

The first music sharing case to reach the US courts has resulted in a $US222,000 damages bill for Jammie Thomas.

Thomas, a Minnesota woman, was accused by music labels of making 24 songs available over the Internet via Kazaa, though this was representative of a much larger number of tracks said to have been shared from her computer.

Many people accused of file sharing by the music industry have opted to settle for a few thousand dollars rather than go through the expensive legal process, but Thomas denied any wrongdoing, saying she did not have a Kazaa account.

Having found in favour of the record companies, the jury measured damages at $US9250 for each song. The companies asked for between $US750 and $US150,000 per song.

Significantly, the judge had previously ruled that the complainants did not have to show that any song had actually been downloaded from Thomas's computer to another, only that the files had been made available to others. This meant the music companies did not have to establish an actual economic loss attributed to Thomas's alleged actions, even on the doubtful basis that every copy downloaded represented a lost sale.

Thomas has also reportedly run up as much as $US60,000 in her own legal costs.

The case was clouded by the fact that Thomas's hard drive was replaced after she received a warning from the labels. She asserted that was due to a hardware problem, while the labels inferred an attempt to cover up wrongdoing.

Lawyer Ray Beckerman, who is associated with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, described the jury verdict as "one of the most irrational things I have ever seen in my life in the law."

"If the Judge doesn't set aside the verdict sua sponte, I expect there to be motion practice to set aside the verdict, based on its obvious unconstitutionality and numerous other reasons, and if that fails I expect there to be a successful appeal", he added in a blog posting.