$222,000 Penalty is Set for Music File Sharing

Oct 07, 06:00 AM

Current Headlines: By Jeff Leeds

In a crucial legal victory for record labels and other copyright owners, a federal jury found a woman in Minnesota liable for copyright infringement for sharing music online and imposed a penalty of $222,000.

The verdict Thursday against Jammie Thomas, a mother of two, brought an end to the first jury trial in the music industry's protracted effort to rein in piracy with lawsuits against individual computer users. Since 2003, record labels have brought legal action against about 30,000 people, accusing them of trafficking in copyrighted songs.

Many of the people sued in such cases settle out of court for, on average, about $4,000, according to the industry's trade association.

Thomas chose to face trial instead, saying that she did not share files on the Kazaa network as the labels contended. She and her lawyer declined to comment after leaving the courthouse.

The jury verdict, which called for $9,250 in damages for each of the 24 songs involved in the trial, came after brief deliberations.

Earlier, the judge in the case, Michael Davis of U.S. District Court, ruled in the industry's favor on a hotly contested technical question, saying the labels did not have to prove that songs on Thomas's computer had actually been transmitted to others online in order for jurors to find her liable. Rather, the act of making them available could be viewed as infringement, the judge ruled.

In arguments and testimony, lawyers for the record labels sought to show that an Internet address linked to a Kazaa user name in fact belonged to Thomas. In addition, the labels contended that Thomas replaced her computer's hard drive after she received an instant message warning that she had been violating the law.

Thomas denied that she had a Kazaa account. She provided conflicting answers to questions about when she replaced the hard drive.

In addition to providing publicity for the industry's crackdown on Internet piracy, the verdict is likely to reinforce the notion that computer users who do become targets of lawsuits - a small fraction of the population using file-swapping networks - are better off settling.

The verdict represents at least a symbolic victory for the Recording Industry Association of America, the trade group that has coordinated the music labels' expensive legal campaign, which has recently suffered some highly publicized setbacks.

This past summer, for instance, the industry was ordered to pay about $70,000 in legal bills for an Oklahoma woman after a judge dismissed labels' claims that she had used a certain Internet address to trade copyrighted music.

In a statement after the decision, the industry association said "the law here is clear, as are the consequences for breaking it."

But critics suggested that even the new verdict would do little to curb the sharing of music.

Eric Garland, chief executive of BigChampagne, which tracks file- sharing activity, said he did not think the verdict would have an immediate impact on piracy. There is "no shortage of new and innovative tools for infringement online," he said.

On its Web site, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit organization that has opposed the industry's legal effort, said that tens of millions of Americans would continue to swap music, as they have since the arrival of the original Napster peer-to-peer service in 1999.

"Every lawsuit," the posting said, "makes the recording industry look more and more like King Canute, vainly trying to hold back the tide."

Originally published by The New York Times Media Group.

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