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Jammie ordered to pay labels two million
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 19 June 2009
Well, that all happened quick. A court in Minnesota yesterday ordered the much previously reported on Jammie Thomas to pay the record industry $1.92 million for sharing 24 songs on Kazaa. That’s over eight times more than first time round. Ouch. Still, presumably Thomas doesn’t have any money, so the large size of the damages is irrelevant.
As much previously reported, Thomas was one of the few people served with a P2P lawsuit by the Recording Industry Association Of America during its self-harming sue-the-fans era that chose to defend herself in court. Which was all very bold, and won her lots of fans among the P2P community, though in the end it didn’t work out so well in court.
The only P2P court case in the US to take place in front of a jury, in 2007 said jury sided with the record companies and ordered Thomas to pay them $222,000 in damages. However, the judge in that trial subsequently decided he’d given the jury some false information. The issue is whether, in order to find someone guilty of infringement, it is enough for a content owner to just show that a defendant has made files available via P2P by dragging them into a Kazaa file-sharing folder on their PC. Or whether it must be shown that someone else then downloaded that content. The record labels had done the former but not the latter. The original Jammie judge had told the jury the lack of the latter kind of evidece didn’t matter, but then judges in other related US court cases took a different opinion, leading to the Jammie judge deciding the original ruling was unsound. A retrial was duly called.
Which was great news for Thomas and the P2P community, who saw it as a second chance to fight the evil record companies. She got a mouthy new lawyer called Kiwi Camara who told reporters: “What you’ll see in Minneapolis will be the first battle in what we think will be a successful campaign against the recording industry”.
But in the end it all backfired. In less than a week a second jury also found that Thomas was guilty of copyright infringement, and this time the damages shot up, so that she was ordered to pay $80,000 for each of the 24 songs she (or someone using her PC) made available via Kazaa, which comes out at a massive $1.92 million.
It’s a victory for the record industry, of course, and a spokesman for the Recording Industry Association Of America told reporters yesterday “we appreciate the jury’s service and that they take this as seriously as we do;’ we are pleased that the jury agreed with the evidence and found the defendant liable”.
That said, as with all successful P2P litigation against consumers, it’s a rather hollow victory. First, Thomas won’t be able to raise anywhere near $1.92 million, so the damages the record companies actually receive will be much more modest. Second, the major damages payment will not provide a deterrent to other file-sharers, partly because the RIAA isn’t suing music fans any more. And third, the record industry look like a bunch of money grabbing bastards again, which will only make the kids more prone to steal their content.
On the upside for the record companies, I suppose, the previously bullish Camara was much less cocky following the ruling, saying he was surprised by the judgement and the size of the damages, but adding that he would negotiate with the labels on Thomas’s behalf regarding an out of court settlement. Though he said if no settlement could be reached Thomas would most likely appeal, with Camara considering using technicalities about copyright ownership in any appeal hearing.
