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Jammie Thomas, the Minnesota woman ordered earlier this month to pay the recording industry $222,000, is pulling out the stops in her bid to defend herself in court.

The 30-year-old woman has begun selling men's and women's undergarments, coffee mugs, canine apparel, and baby bibs to raise money to pay her legal fees. All the merchandise is stamped with the new "Free Jammie" logo created for her by one of her supporters.

The logo features a music note superimposed on a globe and the words: "Free Jammie. Free Everyone."

Thomas is the first person accused of illegal file sharing by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to present a defense before a jury. She denied the RIAA's accusations that she attempted to share 24 songs online and maintained that someone must have spoofed her IP address. The jury didn't believe her story.

Her lawyers have asked for a new trial and will likely file an appeal. To many file sharers, Thomas has become a symbol of RIAA heavy handedness for going after a single mother of two who makes less than $40,000 a year. Those who support copyright law say Thomas was caught sharing files and isn't worthy of pity because she had an opportunity to settle with the RIAA for a few thousand dollars.

Thomas was unavailable for comment Monday, but one has to wonder whether she's taken to selling merchandise as a result of lackluster donations.

Soon after losing her court case, Thomas' supporters began sending her money. In the past three weeks, according to the Web site freejammie.com, she has raised only $16,000. Brian Toder, Thomas' attorney, was reluctant to say how much an appeal could cost, but said it would be a minimum of $30,000 to $40,000.

Jammie Thomas, the Minnesota woman who was recently slapped with a $222,000 penalty for allegedly sharing music on the Kazaa network, is asking for a new trial.

Jammie Thomas

Thomas' attorneys on Monday filed a motion asking for a new trial on grounds that the statutory damages that the jury awarded are excessive and therefore violate the U.S. Constitution's due process clause.

Alternatively, if U.S. District Judge Michael Davis refuses to grant Thomas a new trial, her attorneys have asked him to lower the damages to between zero dollars and $150. They cited an affidavit by analyst Aram Sinnreich estimating that record labels get 70 cents of the $1 that consumers typically pay for a song online.

Such miniscule damages are appropriate, attorneys Brian Toder and Bryan Bleichner say, because "any award above and beyond actual damages or harm suffered is purely punitive" and there was no evidence that anyone but a representative of the Recording Industry Association of America actually downloaded music from Thomas' computer. (Under federal copyright law, damages are based on the number of songs at issue--rather than the number of times they were downloaded.)

This is not exactly a novel approach: some legal academics have argued for a while that statutory damages are out of line with reality. Because copyright law sets the amount of damages at between $750 and $30,000 per infringement, someone sharing 2,000 songs can face between $1.5 million and $60 million in damages. "Willful" infringement ups the penalty to $300 million.

Which is why defendants in other RIAA peer-to-peer cases have argued that copyright's statutory damages are unconstitutional. (The text of the Bill of Rights' 8th Amendment prohibits courts from imposing "excessive fines.")

In another RIAA case in New York state, UMG v. Lindor, defense attorneys claimed that "the statutory damages sought by plaintiffs are unconstitutionally excessive and disproportionate to any actual damages that may have been sustained."

In a preliminary ruling in November 2006, a New York federal judge ruled that it was not a frivolous argument:

Thus, at this juncture, the court need only determine whether an affirmative defense alleging that statutory damages are unconstitutionally excessive is frivolous. Foremost, plaintiffs can cite to no case foreclosing the applicability of the due process clause to the aggregation of minimum statutory damages proscribed under the Copyright Act. On the other hand, Lindor cites to case law and to law review articles suggesting that, in a proper case, a court may extend its current due process jurisprudence prohibiting grossly excessive punitive jury awards to prohibit the award of statutory damages mandated under the Copyright Act if they are grossly in excess of the actual damages suffered...For purposes of the motion for leave to amend, Lindor's affirmative defense is not frivolous. The court will address the merits of the affirmative defense, if necessary, at a later date.

Judges do have the legal authority to lower damages below the $750 limit, but only in the rare case of so-called innocent infringement, where the defendant "was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright."

Jammie Thomas is hard to rattle.

Jammie Thomas

She doesn't raise her voice or get angry when a reporter asks her to read a story where she is called a "liar" by a member of the jury that found her guilty of copyright violations and ordered her to pay the recording industry $220,000 in damages.

She calmly reads the quotes by juror Michael Hegg that appeared Tuesday in a story by Wired.com. She then draws a bead on where Hegg said he is a father, former snowmobile racer and has never been on the Internet.

"I don't need to say too much, obviously," Thomas told CNET News.com on Wednesday. "They admit that they are computer illiterate. This person (Hegg) has never been on the Internet, so how can he say whether my story is possible? I've been contacted by Internet security experts who said that spoofing my address would have been trivial. Internet illiterate people are not going to be able to understand that."

Thomas was sued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for sharing 24 songs online and infringing on intellectual property. Instead of settling for a few thousands dollars like most of those sued by the group, Thomas is the first to take her case to a jury.

In the interview with Wired's David Kravets, Hegg, a steelworker from Duluth, Minn., said that during deliberations, the jury concluded after only five minutes that Thomas was guilty. They then spent five hours trying to decide what to award the recording industry. Hegg, 38, said the jurors did not believe her story that someone spoofed her IP address.

"She should have settled out of court for a few thousand dollars," Hegg told Wired. "Spoofing? We're thinking, 'Oh my God, you got to be kidding.' She's a liar."

Thomas, 30, has announced that she intends to appeal the case brought against her by the RIAA. She said she is seeking to argue her case before someone who is more tech-savvy.

But if Thomas can produce experts that can prove its possible her IP was spoofed, why didn't she present them in court?

"We didn't have the money to put those experts on the stand," Thomas said. "(Hegg) can say my story is not true, but at the same time you're talking about a person with no technology background whatsoever. He said his wife is an Internet guru, but his wife wasn't on the jury."

Thomas also was disappointed that the jury may have been punishing her for crimes committed by others.

"We wanted to send a message," Hegg said in the Wired interview, "that you don't do this, that you have been warned."

Thomas doesn't believe the law allows that.

The jury "saw those feeds that showed 2 million people shared using (file-sharing service) Kazaa and they want to hold me responsible for that," Thomas said. "The law states that you can't hold me responsible for the actions of another. This is one of the reasons why I'm appealing."

On a separate issue, a Web site created to accept donations from Thomas' supporters has crashed after receiving more than 500,000 visitors, she said. Freejammie.com is being moved to a new host server and should reappear in a few days.

Thomas said the site has raised more than $9,000 and the money will go to pay her legal bills.

One of the side issues of the Jammie Thomas controversy is whether someone may have steered her into taking on the recording industry.

The question came up last week shortly after Thomas was ordered by a federal jury to pay the record industry more than $220,000 for violating copyright law. Why would a 30-year-old mother of two, who makes $36,000 a year, want to go toe-to-toe with the recording industry, asks Chris Castle, an attorney, former music executive and owner of a small record label.

Jammie Thomas

Castle, who routinely appears at conferences to debate the morality and legality of file sharing, is skeptical that Thomas, who said this week she intends to appeal the jury's decision, decided all by herself to confront the music sector. He suspects she is being used by anti-copyright proponents in a public-relations struggle against the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

"The situation makes you wonder why she went through all this," Castle said. "Particularly because she is a person of little means, and knows what the potential downside is. It's a little bit amazing."

Last week, Castle pointed a finger at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that advocates for the rights of Internet users, and other notable figures who have spoken out against copyright law. He accused them of trying to turn Thomas into the "Joan of Arc of illegal downloading." He said that such a strategy is unfair because it could lead to Thomas' financial downfall.

After reading Castle's comments, Thomas wanted a chance to reply.

Chris Castle

"My comment to him is that this was all my decision," she said. "From the get go, my attorney has pointed out to me what could happen. We knew (losing the copyright trial) was a possibility. I am no puppet. That he is insinuating that I'm being led around is very insulting to me. I refused to settle with the RIAA because I didn't do anything wrong."

Cindy Cohn, EFF's legal director also denied that anyone associated with that organization tried to influence Thomas. But EFF is also planning to support Thomas' appeal by filing a friend-of-the-court brief, according to a story in Wired.com

Should Thomas lose her appeal, she may not face a $220,000 bill alone. Supporters have begun sending her donations at freejammie.com.

These are fearful times for the music industry. As record companies train their considerable legal might on a Minnesota mother accused of illegal downloading, their talent is walking out the back door.

No sooner had Nine Inch Nails announced on Monday that it no longer was under contract to a record label, when word came that Oasis and Jamiroquai are considering whether to release songs online for free, according to British publication, The Telegraph.

Should they decide to go the free route, Oasis and Jamiroquai--two unsigned but very popular bands--would follow Radiohead, the British group that last week announced it would issue a digital version of its next album, In Rainbows, for whatever price individual customers are inclined to pay.

In addition, Radiohead, one of the world's most popular bands, said it would no longer be represented by a music label.

Even the hardiest music executive is going to struggle to spin this news. There's no hiding what's occurring here. The music industry is on the threshold of disintermediation, a fancy word that means the Internet is threatening to blast a thick layer of the sector's infrastructure into blue oblivion--just like it has with travel agents, stockbrokers and newspapers.

Bands don't need huge music conglomerates to give away songs. Legions of A&R teams are no longer needed to ferret out talent. Music fans can go online and decide for themselves what gets heard.

Should it occur, the extinction of music-industry suits will only be celebrated by the file-sharing crowd. To them, the businessmen who run the record labels stand at odds with art and music. The reputation of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) was cemented in the minds of many last week when it won a $220,000 judgment against Jammie Thomas, a Minnesota woman accused of illegal file sharing. Thomas steadfastly claims she is innocent.

But artists should understand the direction they're headed. Album giveaways are the latest sign that music sales will soon no longer fuel the record industry's economic engine.

In Radiohead's case, the thinking is that even if only few people fork over money for In Rainbows, the group can make up some of the revenue with the sale of concert tickets and merchandise. And the bands could save big by not having to cut the label in.

If the system works this way, great. But for the performer this means we're heading back to the days of wandering troubadours and minstrels singing for their supper. Not really, but it does mean long days and nights on the road, for sure.

Will the artists be satisfied with that? Will they have a choice? Will they take to being merchants as well as musicians?

So far things look promising. Radiohead's promotion has attracted enormous attention, according to the story in The Telegraph. The paper reported that although the band declines to say how many fans have pre-ordered albums, the group's Web site has soared from the 43rd most visited music site in the U.K. to No.1.

Google reported that searches for Radiohead are 10-times higher this week, according to the paper.

Jammie Thomas, the Minnesota woman who last week was ordered to pay the recording industry $222,000 for copyright violations related to sharing songs, has decided to appeal the verdict.

Jammie Thomas says she plans to appeal.

Thomas announced her decision Monday morning on cable news channel CNN and on her MySpace.com page.

Thomas said on her blog that she and her attorney, Brian Toder, plan to appeal based on the federal jury's finding that making songs available online violates copyright.

"This would stop the RIAA dead in their tracks," Thomas wrote on her blog. "Every single suit they have brought has been based on this making-available theory, and if we can win this appeal, they would actually have to prove a file was shared."

The jury issued a decision on Thursday that Thomas was guilty of violating copyright for 24 songs and required her to pay $9,250 for each. The jury never found that Thomas had downloaded any music but had infringed by making the music available for to others to download.

The case is the first time the RIAA has won a jury verdict against an accused file sharer.

Jammie Thomas, the woman who was ordered by a federal jury on Thursday to pay $220,000 to six music labels, said on Friday that U.S. copyright laws are unjust and that the cost of proving her innocence was nearly impossible for someone in her financial situation.

Jammie Thomas

"It says in the Constitution that there should be no undue fines," Thomas said in an interview with CNET News.com. "I was just fined (9,000 percent more) than the value of these songs."

The RIAA sued Thomas for copyright infringement and unlike the vast majority of people sued by the group, Thomas chose not to settle her case for what is typically a few thousand dollars. Instead, she decided to defend herself in court. She strongly denies sharing music files.

But a 12-person jury in Duluth, Minnesota found in favor of the RIAA. They ordered Thomas to pay $9,250 for each of the 24 songs she was accused of sharing.

"I was basically forced into a situation where I had to prove a negative," Thomas said. "How do you prove that your IP address was spoofed or hacked. If I could afford an FBI analyst I'm sure it could have been proven. But I don't have the money."

Thomas, the mother of two sons, ages 11 and 13, said she is still deciding whether to file an appeal. Fred von Lohmann, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group for Internet users, has said that he has been approached by attorneys who wish to help Thomas should she decide to appeal.

"I haven't made up my mind," Thomas said. "If I appeal this case, I would still have no protection against this verdict, and would still be obligated to pay off the judgment. It's kind of a tough decision to make."

On her MySpace blog, Thomas said she was reluctant to accept the many offers of financial help she had received to pay off what she called "this ridiculous bill."

"I have not held my hand out," Thomas said in her interview. "At best I've asked for information or advice. I have asked attorneys who are willing to help pro bono but it didn't feel right to me to ask (people) to donate to my cause."

Still, in her MySpace note, Thomas listed her attorney's Minneapolis address for anyone who insists on helping.