The recording industry began its second attempt at proving that a Minnesota woman engaged in illegal sharing of copyrighted music on the Internet and should be held accountable.
Attorney Tim Reynolds told a jury Monday that the record companies would prove that Jammie Thomas-Rasset, 32, of Brainerd, illegally shared songs on the Kazaa network. He told jurors illegal downloading has cost the music industry billions of dollars and thousands of jobs and made it harder to find and groom new artists.
“Record companies are made up of real people. … People who deliver the music we all enjoy,” Reynolds said in his opening statement as Thomas-Rasset’s retrial got under way in federal court here.
Defense attorney Kiwi Camara countered that Thomas-Rasset would testify she never shared songs illegally, and that the record companies can’t prove she did. He called her one of the industry’s best customers, with a collection of over 200 CDs. He said the industry should be courting people like her, instead of seeking up to $3.6 million in damages from her.
“Ms. Thomas buys music, she doesn’t steal it,” Camara said.
Camara said the industry, at best, could prove only that her IP address — the Internet equivalent of a street address or phone number — was used in the alleged illegal file-sharing. He said they could not prove that Thomas herself swapped any music.
The plaintiffs’ lawyers said they plan to call her to the stand Tuesday.
This case remains the only one out of more than 30,000 similar lawsuits the industry has filed that has made it to trial. The vast majority of the other defendants settled for an average of about $3,500 rather than risk huge judgments and legal bills; Thomas-Rasset’s first lawyer put in nearly $130,000 worth of time for which she couldn’t pay. Her new lawyers, Camara and Joe…