Legal News

In Blow to RIAA, Judge Raises Infringement Standard for File-Sharing

By Dan Slater

Is liability for music file-sharing on its way out the door? Perhaps not, but a decision yesterday by a federal judge in Minnesota will certainly make the policing job of the Recording Industry Association of America a lot harder.

Here’s what happened: Last year, in the first ever file-sharing trial, a jury found Jammie Thomas liable for copyright infringement for offering to share 24 songs on the Kazaa file-sharing network. Thomas got hit with a $222,000 verdict. But last month Judge Michael Davis said he was going to reconsider his trial instructions. At trial, he’d told the jury that merely making songs available for distribution — known in copyright circles as the “making available” standard — was enough to constitute a copyright violation. In other words, the record companies didn’t have to prove actual distribution took place.

Not only has Judge Davis now decided his instructions were wrong, but he’s also imploring Congress to change copyright laws to prevent excessive awards against individuals in similar cases. Here’s the AP story, and here’s a blog post from Ray Beckerman’s Recording Industry v. The People blog, where you’ll find a link to Davis’s opinion.

Jammie Thomas with her lawyer, Brian Toder, outside the Federal Courthouse in Duluth, Minn., Oct. 2, 2007. (AP/Duluth News Tribune, Bob King)

In a bit of reasoning that some might take issue with, Judge Davis pointed out that Thomas allegedly infringed on the copyrights of 24 songs, which he said was the equivalent of around three CDs that would cost less than $54. He said the total award was more than 4,000 times the cost of three CDs. “The Court does not condone Thomas’s actions,” he wrote, “but it would be a farce to say that a single mother’s acts of using Kazaa are the equivalent, for example, to the acts of global financial firms illegally infringing on copyrights in order to profit in the securities market.”

Davis suggested that damages that are more than 100 times the costs of the works would serve as a “sufficient deterrent” to illegal downloading. He also stressed that Thomas had sought no profits from her alleged illegal activities.

Thomas and her attorney, Brian Toder, did not immediately return the AP’s calls seeking comment. A spokesman for the RIAA said the group was preparing a statement.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on September 25, 2008 (boomark / email).