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Jammie Thomas To Appeal $1.9 Million RIAA Verdict

Posted by Soulskill on from the if-at-first-you-don't-succeed dept.

CNet reports that the lawyers representing Jammie Thomas-Rasset have confirmed she will be fighting the $1.9 million verdict handed down in her case against the RIAA. "The Recording Industry Association of America said on Monday that it had made a phone call to Sibley and law partner Kiwi Camara last week to ask whether Thomas-Rasset wanted to discuss a settlement. An RIAA representative said that its lawyers were told by Sibley that Thomas-Rasset wasn't interested in discussing any deal that required her to admit guilt or pay any money. ... '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.'"

6 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. Exxon Valdez, Anybody by MarkvW · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How does Jammie Thomas stack up against the EXXON Valdez case? EXXON got its punitive damages reduced. Why won't the same arguments work for Ms. Thomas? Any lawyers with opinions out there?

    1. Re:Exxon Valdez, Anybody by CodeBuster · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I am no so certain that Thomas is being stupid by continuing to fight. There are some really good Constitutional points to be argued, particularly with regard to damages, and since she seems willing to go forward then I say lets see how far this goes. Her case, sympathetic or not, has already generated lots of publicity and is seen by many, at least within the technology industry, to be an important part of a larger debate on copyright going forward. If this case is going to be the showdown of the century with the copyright cartels then I say lets have it now; before the RIAA and their Justice Department cronies can get DMCA 2.0 and secret copyright treaties pushed through a distracted Congress without any substantial public debate.

    2. Re:Exxon Valdez, Anybody by Keeper+Of+Keys · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It would be a far more interesting test case if she came out and admitted she did it. Then they lawyers would have to make the case that (non-profit) file sharing is actually legal, and/or that the damages are unconstitutional. The last trial was just about the technicalities of whether the prosecution could prove she did it, and they did quite a good job of that.

  2. Worrisome Potential Precedent by resistant · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm worried that the Supreme Court, should it eventually take this case, might find a way to justify these hugely exorbitant awards on technically narrow and nit-picky grounds that nonetheless are broad enough in reality to make fighting the RIAA essentially a hopeless cause financially for most people. The Kelo decision shows the kind of sloppy reasoning that can lead to appalling results. It surely doesn't help that Jammie appears to be guilty of deliberate file-sharing and tampering with evidence after the fact. One could wish heartily for a much more sympathetic defendant.

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  3. It was impossible to cause that much damage by slashqwerty · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If one does the math it is easy to see it was impossible for her to have caused $1.92 million damage. The offense occurred in 2004. Back then a typical cable modem had an upload speed of 256kbps shared with the neighbors. A typical song costs $0.99 on iTunes. An average MP3 is about 3MB. To upload 1.92 million songs would take 2,184.5 days (almost six years) with no protocol overhead, no downtime (infinite nines!), nobody using bandwidth to search for songs, no neighbors using any of the bandwidth, and no one in her house using the internet for anything but uploading files. Kazaa had only existed for three years at the time. She would have had to start before even Napster existed.

    We already know the plantiffs were unsuccessful in several of their download attempts (this was brought up at trial). So it seems many attempts to upload files failed which means it would have taken even longer to cause $1.92 million in damages.

    Oh yeah, also note today is Independence Day in the U.S. Four of the companies that sued her are headquartered outside the U.S. The one U.S. company has a CEO from Canada.

  4. What I think her penalty should be by selven · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Madoff - $60 billion, 150 years - $400 million per year Thomas - $2 million / $400 million = 0.005 years = 2 days in prison. It all works out nicely.