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May 15, 2008

Judge may order retrial in landmark 'file sharing Mom' case...

Minneapolis Star Tribune | Read Full Story >

The judge in a landmark music copyright infringement award against a Brainerd woman notified attorneys today that he’s considering granting a new trial on the grounds that he improperly instructed the jury about what constitutes illegal file-sharing on the internet.

U.S. District Judge Michael Davis said in an order filed this morning in Minneapolis that he may have made a “manifest error of law” last October when he instructed a Duluth jury that simply uploading songs to a music file-sharing network could be considered illegal distribution, even in the absence of proof that anyone received them.

In a verdict hailed by the music recording industry, the jury found Jammie Thomas, 30, willfully violated the copyrights of six recording companies and should pay them $222,000. Jurors found that Thomas, operating on her home computer under the user name “tereastarr” on the Kazaa file-sharing network, copied or distributed 24 songs, and it set damages at $9,250 for each.



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