Jammie Appeals, Citing "Excessive" Damages

Peerless writes "Capitol v. Thomas defendant Jammie Thomas has officially appealed the RIAA's $222,000 copyright infringement award. She is seeking a retrial to determine the RIAA's actual damages, arguing that the jury's award was 'unconstitutionally excessive': 'Thomas would like to see the record companies forced to prove their actual damages due to downloading, a figure that Sony-BMG litigation head Jennifer Pariser testified that her company "had not stopped to calculate." In her motion, Thomas argues that the labels are contending that their actual damages are in the neighborhood of $20. Barring a new trial over the issue of damages, Thomas would like to see the reward knocked down three significant digits — from $222,000 to $151.20.'"

Comments

Re:From what it sounds like...

[richie2000]

if your only evidence for this is that you asked some file sharers and they told you so. Well, first of all, this is not just a few interviews. This is a multi-year, EU-sponsored research project done at the most prestigious technically-oriented university in Sweden. You might conclude that they actually do know about response bias and how to correct for it, especially as they also factored in actual sales figures and their numbers all jive with other studies, with different methodologies. For the lazy, here's a pretty exhaustive summary (and critique) of some of the more known studies so far: http://www.rufuspollock.org/economics/p2p_summary.html

But then again, if you just want to sit around and make-up stuff to believe instead of actually reading up on some of all the research that's being done, be my guest. Hey, why don't you start a church?

It's not an appeal...

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

it's a motion to set aside the verdict, which is quite different than an appeal.

An appeal is to a higher court.

This is a motion directed toward the trial court.