They can only fine her for the files for which she was on trial. It only serves to bias the jury to say that she had 17 gigs. If they were to sue her for having 3,000 files, the charge would be what? $117million? Might the jury have found the RIAA’s request a bit obsessive/punative?

I will say that I have not read the transcript but if they proved the case that she also acted as a “server” for other people that downloaded the songs then the high fine can be because of her roll in distribution.

Expect there to be prosecutions for importing CDs before long. Europe did not extend copyrights the last time around. Songs over 50 years old are now public domain there (including Elvis). Some compilations with their earliest material are already showing up in the budget bins.

The UK is looking at changing this because the Beatles and Cliff Richard may soon become public domain and the Beatles and Michael Jackson and Sony and EMI still haven’t made enough off of these songs to survive. A

ll the other musicians who came before them are to be left out in the cold but NOW real artists are being jeopardized. < / s >

Jury nullification is not legal in the US.

It's been upheld by the Supreme Court on at least three separate occasions, so it's quite legal. It's the very foundation of the "trial by jury of your peers" system, actually - that your peers have the right to set aside any law if they feel it is being applied to you unjustly. Judges and prosecutors may prefer in the interest of expediency that jurors remain unaware of their right to nullify the law, but that right exists based on very clear legal precedents.

Seriously. Think about it. Copyright Reform ought to be a Republican issue. We limit copyrights to, oh, say twenty-five years - or the death of the author, plus ten years. And we do it retroactively. Boom, we destroy half of Hollywood and the music industry overnight.

I'm 100% behind you on that, but it will never happen because congress is an easy buy when you have billions of dollars available to you.

Is there anything to prevent a jury (not this one, but any jury) from saying, ‘this law is unconstitutional’ and tossing the whole shebang?

Nope.

I also haven't read a transcript, but talking heads on TV made the statement that she had more songs than she was tried for. The way they find thieves is get the IP addresses of the P2P traders, and they can actually look at their inventory in the sharing folder. If they found thousands of files, they would then monitor the ones that actually traded. Just because you have thousands of songs available, some may not be wanted by traders.

Either way, to destroy this woman won't even put a blip in file trading across the world. Russia and China probably trade every song ever made by all artists every week. If you have P2P software, you are probably getting half the music from Poland or Russia. To make an example of this person is almost sick if even if you wanted to stop the practice. In America, most of the files are probably on 15 year old kids computers. Probably 10% of the parents care enough to look to see what their kids are doing. Probably 90% wouldn't know what P2P is anyway. So the RIAA has to go after the parents to collect anything.

I've thought about this for years and I honestly can't come up with a solution that is realistic. Code writers are 2 steps ahead of the music industry since the MP3 was invented. The only solution for the artist is to figure a new way to sell/rent/lease their music. Every security method is hacked before it comes out. If it can be put on disk, the disk can be reproduced. I don't know what the answer is. I do know That Russia and China are cheating us out of HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS in trade income. We buy oil, they steal our property. It would go a long way to balance our trade deficit if we got the money for our software, music, and movies. It's hard to get all weepy over Tom Cruise or the Dixie Chicks loosing money though.

America 200 years ago was like China today. We didn’t respect foreign publishing rights on sheet music.

Someone in the US got sued during WWII for publishing a translation of A. Hitler’s Mein Kampf illegally.

Somedays I wonder if we will soon be able to listen to “the white zone is for loading and unloading only...”

The Vichy Chicks aren’t seeing their tours cancelled and low ticket sales because of downloading. There are other factors at work. They shot themselves in the foot insulting their audience repeatedly. That audience walked and political activists stepped in to financially support an act that musically they did not enjoy.

determine the case based upon the current law

The prerogative of jury nullification is part of English Common Law. English Common Law is part of current American law. QED.

The RIAA needs to face antitrust action.

Do you have a case cite for that from the English Common Law?

Since you claim it is founded in common law, you would have to agree, wouldn’t you, that it certainly would not be applicable in Louisiana.

UPDATE:

Defendant knocks Web illiterate juror in RIAA case Tech news blog - CNET News.com

Defendant knocks Web illiterate juror in RIAA case

Posted by Greg Sandoval

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, from Duluth, Minn., 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, said that during deliberations, the jury concluded after only five minutes that Thomas was guilty. He said that they 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 at least 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 supporters has crashed after receiving more than 500,000 visitors, Thomas 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.

Seriously. Think about it. Copyright Reform ought to be a Republican issue. We limit copyrights to, oh, say twenty-five years - or the death of the author, plus ten years. And we do it retroactively. Boom, we destroy half of Hollywood and the music industry overnight.

AMEN!

A patent is only good for 25 years. A patent provides a much better life for everybody as opposed to the garbage being produced by Hellywood. There is NO REASON why a copyright should last longer than a patent. Personally, I don't think a copyright should be good for more than five years.