Update 5:48 p.m. PT: To include quotes from Thomas Rasset's attorney.
Jammie Thomas-Rasset, the Minnesota woman found liable for willful copyright infringement of 24 songs last month, has asked a federal court for a new trial or a reduction in the amount of the $1.92 million damages she was ordered to pay.
Thomas-Rasset, who a jury found liable for willful copyright infringement, asked the court Monday to either alter or amend the judgment, remove or change the award of statutory damages to the minimum, or give her a new trial. The minimum damages would be $18,000.
Joe Sibley (left) and Kiwi Camara, attorneys for Jammie Thomas-Rasset.
(Credit: Camara & Sibley law firm)"(The $1.92 million) judgment is grossly excessive and, therefore, subject to remittitur as a matter of federal common law," her lawyers wrote in the filing with U.S. District Court for the district of Minnesota. "Moreover, such a judgment is inconsistent with the Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution."
In 2007, the Recording Industry Association of America accused Thomas-Rasset, 32, of copyright infringement. The trade group for the four top recording companies initially accused her of sharing 1,700 copyright songs--the equivalent of 150 CDs--but the RIAA whittled down the number to 24. A jury heard the proof against her as well as her defense, which boiled down to her denying any wrongdoing, and rendered a $222,000 verdict against her.
That decision was thrown out by the judge after he acknowledged erring in his jury instructions. Last month, Thomas-Rasset's retrial again saw 12 jurors decide against her. This time, however, they awarded damages of $80,000 for each of the 24 songs she was accused of sharing.
The $1.92 million award outraged many, and last week, Joe Sibley, one of her attorneys told CNET News that she would appeal on the constitutionality of the damages. He said Monday night that he and and legal partner Kiwi Camara still intend to file the appeal but have some time before the deadline.
Jonathan Lamy, an RIAA spokesman declined to comment on Monday, but last week, following Sibley's statement that Thomas-Rasset would appeal, Lamy said: "What's increasingly clear, now more than ever, is that she is the one responsible for needlessly prolonging this case and refusing to accept any responsibility for the illegal activity that two juries decisively found her liable for."
In the filing, Sibley and law partner Kiwi Camera once again took aim at the evidence gathered on behalf of the RIAA by MediaSentry, the Web sleuths that gather evidence of copyright violations for entertainment companies. MediaSentry did so for the RIAA in the case of Thomas-Rasset.
Sibley and Camara argued that the evidence submitted by MediaSentry is inadmissible because it was collected through illegal means. In Thomas-Rasset's retrial, she alleged that MediaSentry violated private investigator and wiretap statutes in the states in which it operated.
The judge in the case denied her original motion to suppress the evidence. Finally, Thomas-Rasset's attorneys wrote that the courts must distinguish between commercial and non-commercial forms of copyright infringement when assessing penalties.
"Even the plaintiffs were shocked by the verdict," Thomas-Rasset said in her motion. "No one could have expected $1.92 million for 24 songs. That alone justifies remittitur; at a minimum, Mrs. Thomas should not be subjected to a penalty that no reasonable person could have expected would flow from the noncommercial music sharing of which she stands convicted.
"But the verdict reveals a deeper problem with the statutory-damages scheme of the Copyright Act as applied in cases like Mrs. Thomas'. The Act does not distinguish, in determining the range of statutory damages, between commercial and noncommercial infringers, between those who infringe for great profit and those who do so for personal use."
Corrected at 4:40 p.m. PDT: The document filed by Thomas-Rasset's attorneys on Monday was a motion for a new trial.
The four defendants in the high-profile Pirate Bay trial face year-long jail terms if found guilty when the verdict gets announced in Stockholm, Sweden, on Friday. But even if prosecutors get their way, it's less evident whether a legal victory would also translate to a broader deterrent against illegal file sharing.
Clearly, this case is being viewed on both sides of the Atlantic as a potentially landmark decision in the heated controversy surrounding unauthorized Internet file sharing. The prosecution accuses the four men standing trial--Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Fredrik Neij, and Carl Lundstrom--of making copyright-protected material available through the Web site thepiratebay.org, one of the most visited BitTorrent destinations in the world.
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The challenge for prosecutor Hakan Roswall has been to prove that the site actually can be legally linked to copyright infringement. He got off to a bumpy start. On the second day of the 13-day trial, which began in February, Roswall was forced to drop accusations that the defendants facilitated making illegal copies. Now the prosecution's case hinges on whether it can prove that the four men were guilty of making the files accessible.
No actual material is stored on the Web site that features a search function for torrent files used for file sharing with the BitTorrent technology--which is legal in itself, but commonly used for illegal file sharing.
It also offers a "tracker," which is a server linking users who swap specific files. The defendants insist Piratebay.org is no different from ordinary search engines, whereas copyright holders accuse it of being the most popular font of copyright infringement around.
Along with the criminal case, a civil claim was filed by media giants Warner Bros. Entertainment, MGM Pictures, Columbia Pictures Industries, Twentieth Century Fox Film, Sony BMG, Universal, and EMI. They demand 120 million kronor ($15 million) in compensation for lost revenue from allegedly illegal file sharing of 20 songs, 9 movies, and 4 computer games.
The judge, Tomas Norstrom, his assistant, and a three-person jury will have to decide whether the defendants could have had knowledge of the files being illegally shared, and whether that is a sufficient basis for sending them to jail.
If the defendants go free, the decision would deal a major blow to the music and movie industry's fight against piracy and its struggle to preserve current copyright legislation protections. If the verdict involves a prison sentence, Piratebay.org is still unlikely to go down.
After a search and seizure of servers by Swedish police at The Pirate Bay's offices in May 2006, which eventually led to the trial, the site was up and running after a few hours. Indeed, sending the four men to jail could also turn them into heroes or martyrs, inspiring others to find new ways to develop piracy.
This much is clear: the technology is already developing to let people share files without fear of being spotted by police or copyright holders.
Services hiding a computer's IP numbers have already been offered for some years, but even easier is a recent kind of second-generation peer-to-peer tool called OneSwarm, developed at the University of Washington in Seattle with the aim of letting file swappers preserve their privacy.
Even after Friday's decision, the case might last for years on appeal. If convicted, the defendants have already promised to fight the decision. And by the time any final verdict gets handed down, the court's opinion may be rendered obsolete by changes in the technology landscape.
CNET News will be covering the verdict, which is expected to be handed down around 2 a.m. PDT Friday, so check back for updates.
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Mats Lewan and Erik Palm, Swedish journalists spending several months at CNET News as exchange reporters, talk with editor Leslie Katz about the Pirate Bay trial and its broader implications.
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You know a Web app has come into its own when it gets banned in courtrooms and locker rooms.
Twitter, which went from being just another Web geek service to an Internet phenomenon lampooned on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," is now becoming a nuisance for at least two American institutions--the judicial system and the NBA.
Some judges and lawyers believe the integrity of trials is being threatened by jurors posting comments about cases on the popular microblogging service.
Lawyers for a building products company are asking an Arkansas court to overturn a $12.6 million judgment against the firm after a juror tweeted during the trial, violating court rules, The New York Times reports.
And in Pennsylvania, defense lawyers for a former state senator found guilty of corruption failed to persuade a judge to declare a mistrial after a juror posted updates on the case on Twitter and Facebook. The lawyers plan to use that for grounds for appeal, the newspaper reported.
For some jurors, the 140-limit of Twitter may be too limiting. A juror blogged about a drunk-driving case before and after a guilty verdict was rendered, in 2007. Regardless, the verdict was upheld and a request for a new trial was denied.
The report also found that jurors are using their iPhones and BlackBerrys to do research in cases, which also is forbidden.
The use of the Internet for research isn't new. In 2007, the conviction of a man accused of sexually abusing minors was reversed and a new trial was granted after two jurors searched for the alleged victims on MySpace.
Sports players are also communicating with their fans on Twitter. Although that is not likely to interfere with game scores, it is still worrisome, at least to Milwaukee Bucks coach Scott Skiles. He has asked his players not to use Twitter from the locker room after learning that Bucks forward Charlie Villanueva tweeted from his mobile phone during halftime on Sunday.
"In da locker room, snuck to post my twit. We're playing the Celtics, tie ball game at da half. Coach wants more toughness. I gotta step up," Villanueva tweeted using the screen name CV31, his initials and jersey number, according to the Associated Press.
The fact that the Bucks beat the Celtics 86-77 didn't really appease the coach.
"You know, (we) don't want to blow it out of proportion," Skiles said. "But anything that gives the impression that we're not serious and focused at all times is not the correct way we want to go about our business."
File swappers are expected to be keeping their eyes on a court in Sweden this week as a landmark copyright-infringement trial gets under way.
The four men behind the popular file-sharing site The Pirate Bay go on trial Monday in Stockholm, accused of helping millions of Internet users illegally download protected movies, music, and computer games. The defendants--Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi, and Carl Lundström--face up to two years in prison and a fine of 1.2 million kronor ($143,529) if convicted of being accessories and conspiracy to break Swedish copyright law.
Two of the defendants insisted during a Webcast news conference in Stockholm Sunday that their site was legal and that the trial's outcome would have no impact on the site's ability to operate.
"What are they going to do about it? They have already failed to take down the site once. Let them fail again," Gottfrid Svartholm Warg said, according to highlights of the event printed by TorrentFreak. "It has its own life without us."
The Sweden-based BitTorrent indexing site has defiantly linked to pirated copies of films, TV shows, music videos, and other content while often boasting that it ignores Hollywood's requests to remove them. While The Pirate Bay does not host any unauthorized content, the site is accused of facilitating piracy by directing its some 22 million users to protected movies and music.
A civil claim brought by a group of media giants is also being heard with the prosecution. The plaintiffs--Warner Bros. Entertainment, MGM Pictures, Columbia Pictures Industries, 20th Century Fox Films, Sony BMG, Universal, and EMI--seek 120 million kronor ($14.3 million) in compensation for lost revenues.
The Pirate Bay has already weathered several attempts by the governments of Sweden and the United States to shut down the site. Yet, this is likely the largest civil challenge the Web site has ever faced.
"It does not matter if they require several million or 1 billion. We are not rich and have no money to pay," said Peter Sunde, another defendant. "They won't get a cent."
John Kennedy, chairman of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, said in a statement that the case was about protecting the interests of the artists.
"The criminal prosecution of The Pirate Bay is about protecting creators from those who violate their rights and deprive them of their deserved rewards," Kennedy said. "The Pirate Bay has hurt creators of many different kinds of works, from music to film, from books to TV programs. It has been particularly harmful in distributing copyrighted works prior to their official release. This damages sales of music at the most important time of their lifecycle."
Prosecutors expect the trial to last 13 days.
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