Judge Declare Mistrial in Jammie Thomas File-Sharing Case

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on September 25, 2008 - 8:18am.

Duluth, Minn. - A federal judge in Minnesota yesterday declared a mistrial in the copyright infringement lawsuit that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) brought against Jammie Thomas, the first American to be found guilty by a federal jury of illegal file-sharing, who was ordered to pay $222,000 the labels in damages. U.S. District Judge Michael Davis said he erred in his initial jury instructions, which stated that Thomas should be found guilty regardless of whether or not it was proven that anyone downloaded the songs offered from her Kazaa account.

In his ruling yesterday, Davis rejects this "making available" argument proffered by the RIAA, and instead said that "a publication effected by merely offering to distribute copies or phonorecords to the public is merely an offer of distribution, not an actual distribution."

However, the RIAA did in fact collect evidence of song downloads from Thomas' Kazaa account, and will likely use this evidence against her at a new trial.

"As with all our illegal downloading cases, we have evidence of actual distribution -- an assertion this court and others nationwide have made clear constitutes infringement," RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy told Ars Technica.

Judge Davis also notably suggested that the $220,000 damages award, and the current law's upper range of $150,000 per infringement, are excessive in these peer-to-peer cases.

"The damages awarded in this case are wholly disproportionate to the damages suffered by Plaintiffs," Davis wrote in his ruling.

"Thomas allegedly infringed on the copyrights of 24 songs -- the equivalent of approximately three CDs, costing less than $54, and yet the total damages awarded is $222,000 -- more than five hundred times the cost of buying 24 separate CDs and more than four thousand times the cost of three CDs."