Judge in Jammie Thomas File-Sharing Case Pushes Settlement

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on March 10, 2009 - 11:48am.

Duluth, Minn. - The judge overseeing the potential retrial of Jammie Thomas, who was the first person to be convicted by a jury of copyright infringement for offering songs on a file-sharing network, has ordered lawyers for Thomas and the record labels to a conference this week in the hopes of reaching a settlement, Wired.com reported. Thomas was convicted in 2007 and ordered to pay $220,000 in damages; the judge, however, declared a mistrial over his misstatement to the jury that Thomas should be found guilty simply for "making available" songs on Kazaa via a shared folder.

The judge ordered a retrial, scheduled to begin on June 15 -- but is now seeking to avoid hearing the same arguments from the parties again by encouraging a settlement.

"We have to have a settlement conference by the weekend," Brian Toder, Thomas' attorney, told Wired.com, while noting that Thomas "has been quoted that she would never settle this case."

The trial would likely be one of the few left in circulation, as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) said in December it would end its litigation campaign against file-swappers, which to date has targeted over 30,000 Americans.

http://snipurl.com/djvth (Ars Technica)

http://snipurl.com/djwna (DMW previous coverage)