Features
Banned From Downloading?
Of the thousands of people the Recording Industry Association of America has filed infringement suits against, Thomas-Rasset was the only person to make it through the court system. What’s more, she’s been tried twice with the first trial ending in a judgment ordering her to pay $222,000 in damages to the label.
But U.S. District Judge Michael Davis felt he erred in his instructions to the jury for the first trial and ordered a second trial, which recently resulted in a $1.92 million judgment favoring the recording industry.
Now recording industry lawyers want more than almost $2 million from Thomas-Rasset. They also want the judge to ban her from ever swapping songs again.
In the request to ban Thomas-Rasset from future infringing activities, recording industry lawyer Timothy Reynolds submitted papers on July 6 stating the Minnesota woman actually distributed more than 1,700 songs to millions of others using Kazaa for their P2P trading. Those in turn, claimed Reynolds, distributed the songs to others, thus increasing the number of infringements exponentially.
But you gotta take some of those numbers on faith. Although the recording industry officially sued Thomas-Rasset for distributing 24 songs, it had previously accused her of providing approximately 1,700 tunes for downloading. Even so, the only downloading activity the recording industry could prove came from Thomas-Rasset’s computer were songs downloaded by MediaSentry, the company hired by the RIAA to investigate illicit P2P activities.
Nevertheless, Reynolds cited the 1,700 songs in his request to the judge.
“The extent of the viral, or exponential, infringement set in motion by Defendant is literally incalculable,” Reynolds wrote. “Absent an injunction, there is nothing to stop Defendant from downloading and distributing more of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted sound recordings through an online media distribution system.”
Of course, most people would consider a $1.92 million judgment as reason enough to never illicitly distribute copyrighted music ever again. But getting the judgment was easy compared to collecting on it, and Thomas-Rasset has already indicated she’ll never be able to pay the jury-ordered amount. So requesting the judge order her to never, ever download or distribute again seems more like a situation where the RIAA wants to cover all the bases than just inflict more legal pain into Thomas-Rasset’s life.
In fact, such requests are common in copyright cases, and a similar request was made after Thomas-Rasset’s first trial ended.
Meanwhile, one of Thomas-Rasset’s lawyers – Kiwi Camara – says her client will appeal the $1.92 million verdict even though the RIAA says it’s still willing to settle for a much lower amount.
Who knows? Maybe Thomas-Rasset wants to be the only person in America to be tried three times for infringing on recording industry copyrights. After all, fame is fleeting.