Jury gets music downloading case in Minneapolis
MINNEAPOLIS -- A federal jury began deliberations Thursday in the nation's only file-sharing case to go to trial as attorneys for both sides disputed in closing arguments what the evidence actually showed.
An attorney for the recording industry, Tim Reynolds, said the "greater weight of the evidence" showed that Jammie Thomas-Rasset was responsible for the illegal file-sharing that took place on her computer. He asked the jury to hold her accountable to deter others from a practice he said has significantly harmed the people who bring music to everyone.
Defense attorney Joe Sibley said the music companies failed to prove allegations that Thomas-Rasset gave away songs by Gloria Estefan, Sheryl Crow, Green Day, Journey and others.
"Only Jammie Thomas's computer was linked to illegal file-sharing on Kazaa," Sibley said. "They couldn't put a face behind the computer."
Sibley urged jurors not to ruin the 32-year-old Brainerd woman's life with a debt she could never pay. Under federal copyright law, the jury could award the recording companies up to $150,000 for each of the 24 songs at issue.
"You need to be $3.6 million certain when you go back that Jammie Thomas was the face behind the computer," he said.
A different jury in 2007 found that Thomas-Rasset had violated the 24 copyrights and awarded six recording companies $222,000, or $9,250 per song, but U.S. District Judge Michael Davis ordered a new trial after deciding later he had erred in instructions to jurors.
This time, in effect, Davis instructed the jurors that in order to find Thomas-Rasset infringed any copyrights, they must determine that someone actually downloaded the songs. He said distribution needed to occur, though he didn't explicitly define distribution. Before, Davis said simply making the songs available on the Kazaa file-sharing network was enough.
This case was the only one of more than 30,000 similar lawsuits to make it all the way to trial. The vast majority of people targeted by the music industry had settled for about $3,500 each. The recording industry has said it stopped filing such lawsuits last August and is instead now working with Internet service providers to fight the worst offenders.
