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September 25, 2008

Free Jamie: Judge orders mistrial in landmark 'file sharing mom' case....

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A $222,000 verdict won by Vivendi SA’s Universal Music Group and other record labels against the first person to challenge online music-piracy claims at trial was thrown out, leaving the companies to reargue the case.

U.S. District Judge Michael J. Davis in Duluth, Minnesota, yesterday set aside the verdict against Jammie Thomas and said the 31-year-old mother deserved a new trial partly because he erred in instructing jurors how to decide if she’d violated the companies’ copyrights on 24 songs she downloaded and offered on the Internet.

The judge also found the damages awarded over the downloads were excessive. “Her status as a consumer who was not seeking to make a profit does not excuse her behavior,’’ he said in the 44-page ruling. “But it does make the award of hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages unprecedented and oppressive.’’

The decision may make it harder for record labels to recover damages in copyright-infringement cases against consumers who download music from the Internet for free. Lawyers for the companies told Davis earlier this year that setting aside the verdict would set an impossibly high standard for proving music-distribution claims.



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