Jammie Thomas Retrial Sees First Day in Court

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on June 16, 2009 - 12:31pm.

Duluth, Minn. - The retrial of accused file-swapper Jammie Thomas-Rasset began on Tuesday with jury selection, opening arguments and testimony from Sony Entertainment and MediaSentry, according to published reports.

Defense attorney Kiwi Camara opened by stating that the record labels "have no evidence that Ms. Thomas did it."

MediaSentry, the company hired by the RIAA to gather evidence on alleged copyright infringement by file-swappers, testified that it downloaded copies of 11 songs from a Kazaa account believed to belong to a computer owned by Thomas.

The defense earlier failed in its attempt to have the court disallow evidence from MediaSentry, having argued the company was not a licensed private investigator in Minnesota.

A representative from Charter, Thomas' ISP, testified that the company connected the IP address reported by MediaSentry to Thomas' Internet account.

Sony's Gary Leak produced certified copies of the copyright registrations of the songs allegedly shared by Thomas for the court, which were not submitted earlier and were argued by the defense to be necessary for the case.

Leak later testified that the top allowable penalty of $150,000 per song Thomas allegedly offered on Kazaa was "certainly" reasonable.

Thomas is expected to take the stand on Tuesday.

In the previous trial, she was found guilty by a jury and ordered to pay $220,000 in damages to the record labels, but the judge admitted an error in his jury instructions and declared a mistrial.

Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/k9ere (Ars Technica)

http://snipurl.com/k9eu1 (Ars Technica)

http://www.p2pnet.net/story/23337

http://snipurl.com/k9esb (Copyrights and Campaigns blog)