Lawsuits & Judgments

The record industry front group has won its first lawsuit against a person accused of sharing music on line. We were openly skeptical about the record industry’s chances once they actually had a case go before a jury but it seems that we were mistaken. Today the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) won a $220,000 Judgment against a Minnesota woman, Jamie Thomas, for downloading or sharing 24 songs from the Kaza file shearing service. The judgment was based on a $9,250 fine for each of the 24 songs. Many, including Ms. Thomas, are calling the fine excessive, but the considering that the defendant could have been fined as much as $150,000 per violation, and the original suit specified that 1,700 songs were downloaded from Kaza , one could argue that she got off lightly.

Ms Thomas claims that she didn’t download the songs and that her IP address may have been spoofed or her computer hacked, but didn’t have the resources to prove either allegation. In the end, the jury didn’t buy it or at least felt that it didn’t matter. In a way, they were saying that you are responsible for what goes on at your computer whether you did it or not.

This seems to be exactly the type of precedent setting judgment that the RIAA was hoping for. In the more than 26,000 lawsuits that they have filed against down-loaders, this is the first one that has gone before a jury. Up until know, their strategy had been to force settlements of a few thousand dollars and a agreement not to engage in any more file sharing. They have dropped suits that didn’t look good and recently a couple of rulings, one a pre-trial motion in this case, seemed to put music industries tactics in doubt.

The defendant has not decided what her next steps in this case will be but the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has reported receiving offers from attorneys who have offered to represent her in an appeal.

Lawsuits & Judgments firmly believes in the right to defend ones own copyright. However, we don’t appreciate the RIAA’s tactics in these cases and we are not sure that we agree with the ruling in this case. We think that the claimants need to prove some actual wrongdoing by a specific person, not just prove it was possible, before such a large penalty is awarded. As a result of this judgment, we expect that more people facing RIAA suits will take the settlement. No doubt this is music to the record industries ears.