From: WSJ.com: Law Blog
Allow us, LBers, if you will, to circle back to a case to which we
gave rather short shrift last week: the one involving the 32
year-old Minnesota woman, Jammie Thomas-Rasset, who was ordered by
a jury last Thursday to cough up $1.92 million as a penalty for
downloading 24 songs. We went back and checked in with Fred von
Lohmann, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier
Foundation out in San Francisco, to bring us up to speed.
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Breaking: Woman Ordered to Pay 1.92M for Illegal Downloading
Wowza. The RIAA has brought 30,000 suits against alleged
file-sharers, but only one has gone to trial. Today, the RIAA won
big. A 32-year-old Minnesota woman woman was found liable for
illegal file-sharing and ordered to pay 1.92 million in damages.
That amounts to 80,000 for each of the songs Jammie Thomas-Rasset
was accused of downloading.
Lawyer defends song swapper in Mass. download case
A lawyer for a Boston University graduate student accused of
illegally distributing music online says his client was "a kid who
did what kids do" when he swapped songs. Attorneys in U.S. District
Court in Boston gave opening statements Tuesday in the recording
industry's lawsuit against 25-year-old Joel Tenenbaum of
Providence, R.I.Tenenbaum, represented by Harvard Law professor
Charles Nesson, is accused of downloading and distributing
thousands of songs, though the case focuses on 30.Recording
industry lawyer Tim Reynolds says song swappers such as Tenenbaum
seriously damage music labels.Tenenbaum is only the second
music-downloading defendant to go to trial. Last month, a federal
jury ruled a Minnesota woman must pay $1.92 million for copyright
infringement.
No more court-ordered settlement talks in Thomas-Rasset case
The judge in the Jammie Thomas-Rasset case today granted the
parties' joint motion for relief from the court's previous order to
participate in settlement talks. A third trial in the peer-to-peer
infringement case, which will consider only the issue of damages,
remains set for October 4.
Third Thomas-Rasset trial moved to Nov. 1
Round three in the record labels' copyright suit against Jammie
Thomas-Rasset has been moved from Oct. 4 to Nov. 1. This third
trial will focus only on damages, after the court granted the
defense's motion for remittitur, slashing the jury's award in the
second trial from $1.92 million down to $54,000. The labels opted
for a third trial rather than accepting the reduced amount.
EFF Fights for Your Right to Resell CDs in Monday Hearing
Seattle - On Monday, June 7, at 9 a.m., a federal appeals court in
Seattle will hear oral argument in a case where the Electronic
Frontier Foundation (EFF) is fighting to uphold an eBay seller's
"first sale" right to resell promotional CDs that he buys from
secondhand stores. Troy Augusto was sued by Universal Music Group
(UMG) three years ago for 26 auction listings for promo CDs. At
issue was whether the "promotional use only, not for sale" labels
on those CDs trump Augusto's right to resell materials that he owns
-- a right guaranteed by copyright law's "first sale" doctrine. In
2008, the district court handed the victory to Mr. Augusto, but UMG
has appealed that ruling. At Monday's hearing at the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the 9th Circuit in Seattle, EFF cooperating counsel
Joseph C. Gr...
