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Jammie Thomas-Rasset to Appeal $2 MIllion RIAA Verdict
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by Jordan Yerman | July 2, 2009 at 01:28 pm
47 views | 10 Recommendations | 1 comment
Jammie Thomas-Rasset, ordered to pay $1.9 million in fines to the RIAA for copyright infringement, will appeal the ruling, according to her lawyer.
This is not surprising, since, once the news of the ruling hit, even those whose songs she downloaded decried the fines as excessive.
"She's not interested in settling," attorney Joe Sibley said in a brief phone interview. "She wants to take the issue up on appeal on the constitutionality of the damages. That's one of the main arguments--that the damages are disproportionate to any actual harm."
In 2007, Jammie Thomas-Rasset was fined $220,000 for the same offense, but the ruling was overturned.
Thomas-Rasset's case has already helped set a series of important legal precedents, including establishing that it is sufficient to show that defendants placed files in their P2P shared folder to prove they intended to make the music available across the network. With the case going to the appeals process, there's a good chance it will continue establishing legal parameters.
That bit is troubling, since my experience with end users is that, once they press the colorful button on a piece of software, they have no idea where generated files end up. As most P2P software automatically generates share folders, pointing to them and crying "Pirate!" strikes me as willfully ignorant of both software design and user behavior.
This case isn't just about a mom and some old pop tunes: it's about the extent to which the courts will let businesses, working from outdated models, dictate the law.
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at 05:52 on July 3rd, 2009
A case that should be followed closely.