It looks like the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) might finally get its payday. The U.S. Department of Justice has decided a $222,000 damage award in a digital music copyright infringement case the RIAA won in October is constitutional.
On Tuesday, Acting Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Bucholtz filed a 20-page brief in the U.S. District Court in Minnesota indicating the jury-assessed damages against Jammie Thomas, a single mom from an Indian reservation, were not excessive.
“Given the findings of copyright infringement in this case, the damages awarded under the Copyright Act’s statutory damages provision did not violate the Due Process Clause” of the Constitution, the brief noted. The damages were not “so severe and oppressive as to be wholly disproportioned to the offense….”
Thomas’ Copyright Crimes
The brief was the government’s response to Thomas’ motion challenging the constitutionality of the $222,000 a judge ordered her to pay for infringing the copyrights of six music labels: Virgin Records, Warner Bros., UMG Recordings, Sony BMG, Capitol Records, and Interscope Records.
The plaintiffs, which claimed that Thomas distributed copyrighted audio files on file-sharing network Kazaa in 2005, asked for $3.9 million, plus legal fees, from the jury in the U.S. District Court in Duluth, Minnesota. The case was the first of its kind in the nation.
The jury did not give the RIAA everything it wanted, but decided Thomas should pay $9,250 for each of the 24 songs highlighted in the case. Statutes allow damages ranging from between $750 and $30,000 per infringement. The maximum monetary penalty for each willful violation is $150,000.
Thomas’ Losing Argument
Under oath, Thomas denied a folder on the Kazaa network belonged to her. But experts testified that the Internet address used by “tereastar,” the name of the Kazaa user who infringed, belonged to Thomas. Thomas appealed the ruling.
Thomas’ grounds for appealing the verdict?…