Duluth, Minn. - The federal judge presiding over the case of Jammie Thomas, the first person convicted by a jury of criminal copyright infringement of music on a file-sharing network, signaled during a proceeding on Monday that he is likely to declare a mistrial in the case, according to coverage by Wired.com and others. The hearing was scheduled after the judge announced in May he may have made a "manifest error" when he instructed the jury that simply the "making available" of songs from Thomas' computer on Kazaa constituted infringement -- even if no actual distribution had been proven.

Thomas was found guilty in October and ordered to pay $220,000 to the major record labels.

"Certainly, I have sent a signal to both sides of where I'm headed," U.S. District Judge Michael Davis said in court on Monday.

Even if a mistrial is declared, Thomas may still be found guilty, as the record labels' investigators typically do download several files from a suspected infringer's file-sharing folder -- and did so in Thomas' case -- Wired.com noted.

Thomas' lawyer Brian Toder argued, however, that the labels cannot consider these downloads unauthorized.

"You can't infringe your own copyright," Toder said.

Related Links:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/08/judge-hints-at.html

http://snipurl.com/3bdlx (Ars Technica)

http://snipurl.com/3bdst (DMW previous coverage)