Saturday, June 20, 2009

Second Time is Definitely NOT the Charm...

So the Thomas copyright case in Minnesota came to a verdict this week.1 Instead of the previous $220,000 verdict, she's now on the hook for something to the tune of $1.92 million.2 Talk about things definitely not going your way. Checking the slip opinion from the trial court, it only had the motions in limine hearings, so it was not very helpful for my purposes.

Basically, as we can all tell, Thomas got put to the fire so the industry can have its big "win." The problem is this isn't a win, it's punishing someone incredibly out of proportion to what she did. Now I understand the argument that the fine should be that big because the files she shared can be shared ad infinitem.3 There is another way, you could track how many files were downloaded off of her computer and then determine how many copies of the song were released and THEN create your damages. Obviously this ignores the copies that were made and what happens to them, but there has to be a point where you stop counting.

The article does mention that the lawyers representing Thomas are also representing two other copyright infringment defendants.4 I sincerely hope they end up with a better result than this, because someone needs to find the bludgeoning tactics that the RIAA has been using. The RIAA has said it's stopping the consumer-lawsuit practice that has historically been using, however, if they really want to reclaim some of that goodwill, they should drop all their current open lawsuits and find a way to settle with people like Thomas who have been grossly over punished.

1: Chris Williams, Big fine Could be Big Trouble in Downloading Case, Yahoo.com News, available at http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090619/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_music_downloading.
2: Id.
3: Id.
4: Id.

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