Duluth, Minn. - A federal judge has set a tentative date of March 9 to begin the retrial of Jammie Thomas, the first person to be convicted by a jury of copyright infringement on file-sharing networks, whose earlier conviction was vacated by the judge, Wired.com reported.

U.S. District Judge Michael Davis declared a mistrial after deeming that he erred when instructing the jury that Thomas could be found guilty simply by "making available" copyrighted songs via a shared folder on Kazaa, regardless of whether or not any infringement had occurred.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is still appealing the judge declaration of mistrial.

The record industry trade group has also said it believes it will still prevail at a new trial, since its investigators were in fact able to document the downloading of songs from the Kazaa account tied to Thomas.

Related Links:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/10/retrial-date-se.html

http://snipurl.com/4vq3t (DMW previous coverage)