Wise Law Blog: Minnesota Woman will Appeal $220,000 Damages in Music Downloading Decision

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Minnesota Woman will Appeal $220,000 Damages in Music Downloading Decision

Jammie Thomas, the Minnesota woman ordered to pay $220,000.00 to the music industry for for illegally downloading music files, will appeal the jury's decision.

(See our previous post on this case: $220,000.00 Damages to the Music Industry for Illegal File Sharing)

The Duluth News Tribune has comments on the appeal from Ms. Thomas' lawyer, Brian Todler:

“We think the amount of damages is absolutely unconstitutional,’’ Toder said in a phone interview Monday. “As everybody in the world knows, the plaintiffs had no damages. The 24 songs were downloaded to MediaSentry’’ — an information security company the plaintiffs used to download the recordings from Thomas.
“The plaintiffs would contend that hundreds of thousands of songs were downloaded,’’ Toder said. “There’s no evidence of that, just speculation. In the United States of America you don’t get damages based on speculation.’’
The head of litigation and anti-piracy for Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Arista Records testified during the trial that music piracy has caused billions of dollars of harm to the industry. Another witness testified that more than two million people were on the file sharing network at the same time as Thomas.
In his motion, Toder argues that if the minimum statutory award is $750 per song recording, the court “has the authority, if not the duty, to test the constitutionality’’ of that award because it is more than 1,000 times the actual damages or harm suffered by the plaintiffs.
Toder concludes his motion by stating if his client does not receive a new trial, the amount she owes should be between zero dollars and $150 total, comparing actual damages to the penalty; or $750 total if the court chooses to aggregate and deem all 24 song recordings in a single infringing act and then applies the statutory minimum penalty.