Industry
A federal jury in Minneapolis said Jammie Thomas-Rasset, 32, of Brainerd, Minnesota, should pay $80,000 for each of the 24 songs that were posted on the site so others could download them, including “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls and “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns n Roses. The first time the case went to trial, in 2007, a jury awarded $9,250 per song, or $222,000.
The Recording Industry Association of America brought more than 35,000 legal actions against people it claims were illegally sharing music before changing its policy in December. This is the only case to go to trial thus far. U.S. District Judge Michael J. Davis threw out the first verdict, saying he gave the jury incorrect instructions.
After yesterdays verdict, Thomas-Rasset, a natural- resources coordinator for the Mille Lacs Band of the Ojibwe, said she was disappointed that she wasnt able to convince the jury that she didnt post the songs.
“There was nothing I could do,” Thomas-Rasset said. “Now the record industry has a $2 million award against me. The only thing I can say is good luck trying to get it, because you cant get blood out of a turnip.”
Her lawyer, Kiwi Camara of Camara & Sibley in Houston, said Thomas-Rasset may appeal the verdict, or try to negotiate a settlement.
Willing to Settle
“From day one, weve been willing to settle this case for somewhere between $3,000 and $5,000,” said Cara Duckworth, an RIAA spokeswoman.
The jury could have awarded anywhere from $750 a song to $150,000 a song.
In his order for a new trial, Davis in September urged Congress to change copyright law to address damages in peer-to- peer cases such as this one. He called the $222,000 award — equal to more than 500 times the cost of buying 24 compact discs — “unprecedented and oppressive.”
Constitutional Questions
“The disproportionate size of the verdict raises constitutional questions,” said Fred von Lohmann, a lawyer with the consumer group Electronic Frontier Foundation thats criticized the music industrys tactics. “Was the jury punishing her for what she did, or punishing her for the music sharing habits of tens of millions of American Internet users?”
“The question is, Does this have any longer-term consequences on file sharing,” said Lawrence Kenswil, an attorney with Loeb & Loeb in Los Angeles who earlier headed Universal Musics digital division. “The general feeling is, people dont think they will get caught.”
During the four-day trial, lawyers for Thomas-Rasset argued that the record companies couldnt prove she was the person who was posting the songs on the Kazaa file-sharing site and likened the RIAAs tactics of suing users to the villainous robot in the “Terminator” movies.
Significant Layoffs
The illegal downloading has “caused significant layoffs and harm to my clients ability to provide the music that we all enjoy,” music industry lawyer Timothy Reynolds, of Holme Roberts & Owen LLP in Denver, told the jury in closing arguments.
At its peak in 1999, the industry brought in $14.6 billion in sales; last year that number had fallen to $8.5 billion. The RIAA claims the primary reason for the drop was because of online music theft as well as traditional piracy in the form of bootlegged CDs.
The RIAA in December changed its policy to work with Internet service providers to impose sanctions on people who illegally swap songs over the Web.
In throwing out the original verdict, Davis said it wasnt enough that Thomas-Rasset may have posted the songs on the Internet. To find against her, the jury must decide the songs had actually been distributed to someone else, he said.