Posted on 10/04/2007 6:55:02 AM PDT by ShadowAce
DULUTH, Minn. (AP) - The case against Jammie Thomas is expected to go to jurors today. Six major record companies accuse Thomas, 30, of sharing 1,702 songs online in violation of the companies' copyrights. The record companies claim they found the songs on a Kazaa file-sharing account they later linked to her.
After two days of testimony from 11 witnesses, the defense rested without calling anyone to the stand, and closing arguments in the civil trial are scheduled for this morning.
U.S. District Judge Michael Davis said he would decide then whether the record companies would have to prove the songs were actually transferred to any other users for jurors to find Thomas liable.
Thomas testified yesterday that she didn't do it, though she acknowledged giving conflicting dates for the replacement of her computer hard drive. Record company attorney Richard Gabriel has suggested she replaced the hard drive to cover her tracks.
She acknowledged she listened to - or owned CDs released by - more than 60 of the artists whose music was in the Kazaa file-sharing folder at the heart of the case. Thomas denied the folder was hers.
"Did you ever have Kazaa on your computer?" Thomas' attorney, Brian Toder, asked her.
"No," she said.
Toder has tried to raise doubts that the companies can prove it was Thomas who downloaded and shared the music.
Earlier in the day, Thomas set up her computer in court to show the jury how quickly CDs could be copied onto it. The demonstration was aimed at countering testimony by an expert who testified that the songs on one of Thomas' computer drives were created just 15 seconds apart, suggesting piracy. But each song Thomas copied in court over Gabriel's objection took less than 10 seconds to land on the computer.
Jacobson said the comparison might not be valid because the version of Windows Media Player that Thomas used to copy, or "rip," the CDs in court was different from what was available in February 2005, when the files in contention landed on her hard drive.
The record companies involved in the lawsuit are Sony BMG, Arista Records LLC, Interscope Records, UMG Recordings Inc., Capitol Records Inc. and Warner Bros. Records Inc.
The record companies have not specified how much they are seeking in damages. But on Wednesday, RIAA spokeswoman Cara Duckworth said they would be asking for damages on the 24 songs that the trial is focused on, not the 1,702 that were described in the lawsuit.
Copyright law allows damages of $750 to $30,000 per infringement, or up to $150,000 if the violation was "willful." That means Thomas, who works for the Department of Natural Resources of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, could face a judgment of anywhere from $18,000 to $3.6 million for the 24 songs.
Regardless of how the first trial of a person accused of illegally sharing music online turns out, the record industry plans to keep suing listeners for a while.
"We think we're in for a long haul in terms of establishing that music has value, that music is property, and that property has to be respected," said Cary Sherman, President of the Recording Industry Association of America, which coordinates the lawsuits.
Some 26,000 lawsuits have been filed starting in 2003, but the case against Thomas is the first to go to trial. Many other defendants settled by paying the record companies a few thousand dollars.
Sherman said Wednesday night that he's surprised it took this long for one of them to go to trial.
After four years, he said, "it's become business as usual, nobody really thinks about it. This case has put it back in the news. Win or lose, people will understand that we are out there trying to protect our rights."
The verdict will be interesting either way it turns out.
Hope the RIAA Mafia get their proverbial A$$ handed to them.
I do like the it wasn't me defense. How do they prove the IP address was certainly only hers beyond a reasonable doubt?
Yeah--if they're not careful, they'll end setting a precedent that will be harmful to the consumer.
It might be spun that way but dozens of people go and change out hard drives at a given store every day.
How do they prove the IP address was certainly only hers beyond a reasonable doubt?
Depends on the logging level of her ISP, if it was say a cable modem they could quite easily tie the MAC Addy to the IP its all a metter of how long they hold onto such information
That was total BS. IIRC, such programs usually start writing the file immediately upon the start of a download. So if you pick 50 songs to download, their file creation times will be fractions of a second apart. 15 seconds when ripping a CD sounds about right though, as the files are created one after the other.
I'd have more sympathy for the record label if they hadn't been lying during this case. I don't see freely sharing music with millions of other people as fair use.
It's a civil case so they only need a preponderance of the evidence, a much lower standard.
I asked this on a thread yesterday. It’s not file sharing, but it is sharing in a way. Another thread said that the president of sony said even ripping your own and listening to it yourself is illegal. What about a dj who makes a mixer for a gig he has?
From the article, it appears that the plaintiffs were arguing that since songs were created on her hard drive every 15 seconds, they must have been illegally downloaded on Kazaa. The demo was to prove that they could have been ripped from her own CD's (which she owned).
As far a changing the hard drive, it's hard to prove that meant she was covering her tracks. I will wipe my drive an reload on a regular basis, just because, and sometimes I get a newer faster hard drive and replace my old one. That's not to cover suspicious or illegal behavior, it's just because I'm a hardcore techie.
If they have the IP address, it may be possible to prove she was responsible, but only if her ISP keeps DHCP logs that long, or if they use static or reserved addresses. Otherwise, it can be very hard to establish what computer had a particular DHCP address at a specific period of time.
RIAA Headquarters..You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.
I don’t care if she is guilty as sin.... I want the RIAA to lose.
Jury nullification would be my plan...were I on the jury.
RIAA has long been a criminal enterprise...involved in price fixing among other things...they come with dirty hands before the court.
I doubt they have to - it's a civil trial, not a criminal trial.
I don't know about anyone else but when my PC begins acting funky (error messages,etc) I fix it by reformatting my HD which happens once or twice a year.It's a pain but things run smoothly afterward.
The fact that she changed a HD doesn't,IMO,necessarily mean anything.
Yep.
My data is worth more than my hard drive.
When my drive starts acting funny, sounding funny, or reporting bad sectors, I buy a new one ASAP.
Then I take the old drive to the gun range.
The record industry thinks it’s dying because of Napster? Some day they’ll realize it’s because they’ve been releasing nothing but worthless trash for the last 15 years.
“What about a dj who makes a mixer for a gig he has?”
I wondered that very thing, then one day I noticed a ASCAP sticker at the pub I frequent. They get the sticker by paying a monthly fee, and have it to cover music played by bands. The bartender said the company literally hounded them until they bought the sticker. I would imagine most DJs are in the same boat
Under that line of reasoning, the mere purchase of an external harddrive could be construed as an intent to defraud.
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