Mistrial declared in RIAA file-sharing case

Remember Jammie Thomas? The single mother who fought against the RIAA when they sued her? She was originally told to pay $222,000 for copyright infringement. On Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Michael Davis declared a mistrial and ordered a retrial. The mistrial is ruled on the grounds that the RIAA had convinced him and the jury that it did not have to prove that files that were in Jammie Thomas’ Kazaa shared folder did not need to be downloaded. According to the judge, the RIAA downloading the files from the shared folder should prove enough, yet the instruction to the jury that no proof of the being able to download the files is needed was “erroneous.”

This is only a small step so far in the RIAA trials against piracy. Jammie Thomas was the first person to bring the claims into a court room while everyone else settled before reaching court. We’ll have to watch and see what a jury rules when under instruction that doesn’t so blatantly make the case essentially an automatic win for the RIAA.

Though I don’t know the exact specifics of what went on in the court, I don’t see why the RIAA couldn’t have just proven that the songs were available for download. There are plenty of ways to record a video of something that’s happening on screen, and the RIAA downloads songs before trial anyway.

Most interesting in the judge’s statement is his condemnation of the fines levied against Jammie Thomas. He writes: “

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 500 times the cost of buying 24 separate CDs and more than 4,000 times the cost of three CDs.”

Now that’s something that’s easy to agree with in this case.

Read [Wired]