Copyright Infringement (current events)

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Current Event Chose to Discuss: Music Copyright Infringement Law

Over the past few years Jammie Thomas, from Minnesota, mother of four, has been involved in a three year long court case, dating back to October 4th of 2007, involving copyright infringement.  The Minnesota mother was alleged to have shared over 5,000 songs over her lifetime, 1,702 of them being on February 21st, 2005, however plaintiffs only sought relief for only 24 of those.  Thomas contested that she was not the person behind the account and denied having shared any files, her lawyer then backed her story saying that somebody must have hacked into her account.  A hard drive containing the copyrighted material was never presented at trial, though Thomas did give the courts a hard drive that did not have any trace of the material that she was being accused of sharing.  It is worth noting that the judge instructed the jury that “making available” was enough to constitute an infringement.

On October 4th, 2007, after 5 minutes of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict finding Thomas liable of willful infringement, and awarded damages in the amount of $222,000, a total of $9,250 per song.  Once the guilty verdict was handed down, Thomas’ lawyer then ordered a retrial on the basis that recent case law cast doubt on the theory of “making available” as infringement.

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After Thomas’ original lawyer stepped down in May, 2009 while preparing for the retrial, Thomas accepted Joe Sibley’s offer to defend her.  The retrial was held on June 15th, 2009 and the jury was then instructed to find the owners’ copyright was infringed upon provided the ownership claims were valid and provided there was an infringement of either the reproduction or the distribution right.  For every song reproduced, the jury had to decide whether it was willful or non-willful, then damages had to be assessed accordingly.  

Again after just  five hours of deliberation on June 18th, 2009 the jury ...

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