Jammie Thomas Takes Constitutional Argument To SCOTUS

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Jammie Thomas-Rasset, the Native American Minnesotan found by a jury to have downloaded 24 mp3 files of RIAA singles, has filed a petition for certioriari to the United States Supreme Court, arguing that the award of $220,000 in statutory damages is excessive, in violation of the Due Process Clause. Her petition (PDF) argued that the RIAA's litigation campaign was 'extortion, not law,' and pointed out that '[a]rbitrary statutory damages made the RIAA's litigation campaign possible; in turn,that campaign has inspired copycats like the so-called Copyright Enforcement Group; the U.S. Copyright Group, which has already sued more than 20,000 individual movie downloaders; and Righthaven, which sued bloggers. This Court should grant certiorari to review this use of the federal courts as a scourge.'"

Comments

Re:How likely are they to hear the case?

[Stolpskott]

The one thing I can see in favor of the case being heard is the argument that the current method for establishing statutory damages leads to a pattern of overly broad legislation on the part of RIAA/MPAA-inspired copyright entities, leading to an excessive drain on time and resources of the lower courts.

Re:How likely are they to hear the case?

[alen]

Scotus is only supposed to hear a small number of cases that will have major political and constitutional impacts

They are not a trial court. You get 10 minutes to speak your summary most of which you get interrupted by questions from the justices

Re:Good luck

[dywolf]

How does one buy the court?

I know we mock them by calling them the Supreme Corporate Court of the US...
but really they have one job. and its not to do what we think is the "right thing".
it's to interpret the laws as written and determine points of conflict, priorty, constituinionality, etc etc.

And unfortunately, while we may not -like- a lot of the decisions coming out of there lately, they are by and large legally sound (granted: they are lawyers, so they're good at rationalizing most anything).

Since they are supposed to be limited to interpreting the laws as written, the best way to get around a court decision you dont like is to change the law, which leads us back to the Congrees. So its not that the Court has ben bought off (in fact, its completely illegal to do so). Its the bought off Congress supplying the laws that frame the Courts decision process.