Judge declares mistrial in RIAA filesharing case, sets aside $222,000 verdict

We always thought that the RIAA's first-ever filesharing trial victory against Jammie Thomas was a little suspect since the labels weren't required to prove that Thomas even had Kazaa installed on her machine or was the person using the account in question, and it looks like the court agrees -- it's just declared a mistrial and set aside the $222,000 judgment on the grounds that simply making copyrighted works available for download does not constitute copyright infringement. That's a huge decision -- the "making available" theory is the basis for most of the RIAA's legal arguments -- and it means that the RIAA will now have to prove the unauthorized transfer of each song it wants to collect damages on at the new trial. We'll see what effect this has in the broader sense -- we've got a feeling we're in for a slew of appellate decisions on both sides of the "making available" debate -- but for now it looks like the good guys are finally starting to score some points.

[Via ZDNet, thanks JagsLive]

Read - Wired article
Read - Decision [PDF]

[Rafer @ Sep 25th 2008 1:41PM]

Kazaa:1 RIAA: 0 Bittorrent:999,999,999

[Darkroom @ Sep 25th 2008 2:07PM]

humm... this story makes me want to listen to some new music... *starts bit-torrent client*

[Kris @ Sep 25th 2008 2:30PM]

THAT'S OVER 9000!!!!!

[CosterMonger @ Sep 25th 2008 4:44PM]

Didn't McTorrents end that whole served counter thing years ago

[Flashpoint @ Sep 25th 2008 5:15PM]

I get away with PSP file sharing cause I'm smart enough to use old throwaway laptops with a portable HDD that can easily be hidden or disposed of off my own premises.

I also STEAL WIFI.

Come get me RIAA....wear your F"kin VEST THOUGH.

[N3XuS @ Sep 25th 2008 5:31PM]

Wait a minute, people still use Kazaa. IMO she should've got fined for being so stupid to use P2P apps in the first place. If you're going to download 'backups' then be clever about how you going to do it.

[YesHone @ Sep 25th 2008 6:10PM]

Or you could just use some serious encryption... "Last I checked the password was 'RIAA SUCKS' you honor, honest"

[Testies, Testies, 1, 2... 3? @ Sep 25th 2008 6:25PM]

RIAApists

[kuei12 @ Sep 25th 2008 6:31PM]

"Kazaa:1 RIAA: 0 Bittorrent:999,999,999"

roflmfao
This is great news!

[thebigDallas @ Sep 25th 2008 8:35PM]

Flashpoint you should be ashamed for yourself, that is ridiculous and this from someone that has no morals on file sharing or much of anything else

[AJ in the East Bay @ Sep 25th 2008 1:43PM]

Bwahahahahahahahahahahaha!! Take that, RIAA!! Up yours!!

[kevjohn @ Sep 25th 2008 1:45PM]

Hard to know who to root for, the RIAA or someone named "Jammie".

[AJ in the East Bay @ Sep 25th 2008 1:48PM]

Yeah, Jammie definitely isn't the right poster child for file sharing, but at the end of the day it's all about what her case represents.

[konshuss @ Sep 25th 2008 2:01PM]

the RIAA needs to let jammie get back to jammin'.

[BEN! @ Sep 25th 2008 1:45PM]

"-- but for now it looks like the good guys are finally starting to score some points."

Who's are the good and bad guys again?

[kevin @ Sep 25th 2008 1:49PM]

"but for now it looks like the good guys are finally starting to score some points."

....so the people who are illegally swapping songs, movies, software, etc, are the good guys? I'm not saying the RIAA should be called good guys, but I wouldn't exactly call pirates the good guys, either.

[squirrelking @ Sep 25th 2008 2:37PM]

Good guys being the individuals being sued for copyright infringement without any evidence showing they are the ones responsible. Similar to the cease and desist letters I've been receiving at my business even though I'm the only one who works here and am not doing any illegal file sharing. My ISP is threatening to pull my service, I've since added mac address filtering to my security measures because it seems like someone must be nearby cracking my wifi.

[Mikeweezer @ Sep 25th 2008 3:30PM]

@squirrelking - I'd change your SSID, hide it and put some WPA2 protection on there. MAC address filtering will only take you so far. If the RIAA is after you, I'd also recommend saving the router log for the offending MAC address for legal purposes.

Oh - and get a good lawyer.

[IndiaTech @ Sep 25th 2008 3:40PM]

Wait... MAC Address filtering is not allowed?

[IndiaTech @ Sep 25th 2008 3:42PM]

Sorry... My Bad. I misread "I've since" as "since I've"

[jspan @ Sep 25th 2008 5:19PM]

If you have to ask this question, you obviously aren't paying much attention.
The industry corporations that illegally collaborated and were found guilty of price fixing your CDs could never be mistaken for good guys.
The trade organization that invests in lawyers suing their own customers for a QUARTER MILLION DOLLARS for 2 dozen songs could never be mistaken for good guys.
Major victory, very pleased with this great news. BTW, even if they were [insert lame recording artist here] .mp3s, Jammin Jammie is the good guy here. Thanks for playing!

[sodapop @ Sep 25th 2008 1:48PM]

Go good guys! Go people who illegally distribute other people's copyrighted material!

Shouldn't we be cheering our justice system and our system of checks and balances? And our rights as the accused and innocence before guilt?

Stealing/pirating is wrong. Always has been. Always should be.

[Draaaainage! @ Sep 25th 2008 1:53PM]

Agreed, theft of all nature is wrong.

That being said, it would be nice if the RIAA had to form some sort of coherent case, with actual evidence instead of being able to walk into a court room and say "your honor, this is the woman who owned a computer that was connected to the internet and could have possible shared N number of songs" and then having the judge say "I see, [($222,000 / 24) x N] to be paid to the RIAA."

Yeah, I take this mistrial ruling as a move in the right direction for the legal system.

[War Machine @ Sep 26th 2008 2:16AM]

The craziest thing though is the amount. You could literally steal a bunch of CDs from a store, make copies of them and give them away, and you would still get charged less than $222,000 dollars in court for that because it wasn't distributed on the net.

[xcrunk @ Sep 25th 2008 1:50PM]

I would NOT hit that.

[AJ in the East Bay @ Sep 25th 2008 1:55PM]

hehehehehe

[Darkroom @ Sep 25th 2008 2:10PM]

don't know what you miss'n fool! CHUNK IN THA TRUCK!!!

[POV @ Sep 25th 2008 3:48PM]

Its all about the cushion for the pushin

[Zinger314 @ Sep 25th 2008 1:53PM]

I'd hit that.

The guy on the right, I mean.

[DeusExMach @ Sep 25th 2008 2:19PM]

...with a hammer.

[The Dude @ Sep 25th 2008 1:53PM]

I'm going to go ahead and moan about networks not correcting ratios when you're watching HD. Anyone wondering what the fuck is wrong with me can take a look at the frame grab above. How hard is it to pad SD-only video with a pair of vertical borders so that people don't look like HD manatees? Lazy bastards.

[canoo @ Sep 25th 2008 2:15PM]

No mistake.. She's actually that wide.

[kjb434 @ Sep 25th 2008 2:26PM]

It's not the networks fault you idiot.

It the TV users. They have to set it to not stretch. Most cable and satellite boxes will do this for you automatically.

The networks broadcast the content in set ratios and the end user hardware has to be set correctly to display it.

I do have issues though with HD content not being distributed correctly. Some HD content comes in with the screen crawl tech chopped off or station markers off screen and other HD channels are perfectly fine. I've checked that on several different TV at other houses and its consistent

[Murphy Mac @ Sep 25th 2008 2:43PM]

Is it really necessary to call him an idiot?

That said, I can't believe how many people have scurried out to get big televisions for the incredible experience HD offers - and now watch tons of standard def stuff stretched and distorted! And they don't take the time to figure out what the problem is, they just watch it that way. I really can't believe how many restaurants and bars display distorted television.

Oh - and about the RIAA: I can't believe a decent lawyer can't wiggle their client out of every one of these lame cases. If you're a lawyer who loses a Kazaa case you should get a job at Best Buy installing HD televisions.

[Sporkinum @ Sep 25th 2008 2:49PM]

I agree.. I'd guess at least 75% of people with 16:9 screen TV's distort the picture because they want to "use the whole screen".
Drives me batshit crazy.

[Dave Jerrard @ Sep 25th 2008 7:35PM]

It's both the networks (some more than others) and the widescreen owners (again, some more than others). I have a widescreen, set up correctly, and yet, several HD channels insist on that fisheye edge stretching method to broadcast their so called HD content, which is really just SD content stretched to fill the screen. TNT is the worst offender here, but there are others. The new HD versions of History and Discovery also like to broadcast standard def stuff that's zoomed in to about 95% of the width of the screen so you still have black bars down the sides, but very narrow ones, and you also have the top & bottom of the frame cropped off, which makes reading credits & crawls a bit of a challenge since they're frequently only partially visible. It's not like the viewer can adjust the image to see it correctly since that's the way it's broadcast.


He Who Hates That Fisheye Warp His Mom Uses For Everything.

[Salsa Shark @ Sep 25th 2008 9:03PM]

I have my picture set to stretch even though I don't really care for the distortion. This is to avoid the burn-in problem (yeah I know it's called "image persistence" on LCDs, but it's the same fucking thing).

Olevia's seem to be very prone to this and it's not easy to clear up, despite what some people think. So I figure it's best to avoid it altogether and ensure that the entire screen is used as much as possible. I cringe when I see my friends who have the black bars on the side because of how much SD they watch but don't stretch the picture...

[Sebastian @ Sep 25th 2008 1:58PM]

Well, if the allegation of having 24 songs in a folder share is reason enough for the RIAA to crush a persons existence (and I guess it is fair enough to assume that 220,000.00 USD is big enough a penalty to cursh Jane Average's existence), then I don't want to know what these people would have suggested to do to her if she had actually stolen something....

[Mike @ Sep 25th 2008 3:06PM]

So who's the one doing the wrong, the ones downloading the files or the ones sharing the files

[Derbeste @ Sep 25th 2008 4:00PM]

The ones doing wrong are the ones that think $222,000 is fair compensation for 24 songs.

Ruining someone's life to make an example out of them so you can afford a bigger jet = the bad guys.

[Osiris @ Sep 25th 2008 2:04PM]

Piracy is not theft, it is copyright infringement.

Hurray for victory against unjust accusations and upholding innocene until proven guilty.

[Ari @ Sep 25th 2008 1:59PM]

let's go with little guys and call it a day. The way i look at it is they RIAA (and MPAA for that matter) make it so difficult to move around legal music and movies they're basically daring you to pirate it.

[Ryan @ Sep 25th 2008 2:23PM]

RIAA: go to HELL

[Ted @ Sep 25th 2008 8:11PM]

And what about the thousands of other people who decided to settle out of court? All that money is unrecoverable - since RIAA never had to prove anything and they paid - they are screwed!

[James @ Sep 25th 2008 2:06PM]

F*** the RIAA

[Magallanes @ Sep 25th 2008 2:55PM]

Some offtopic:
Why this post is highest ranked?.

[James @ Sep 25th 2008 3:03PM]

Just taking a wild guess... but I'm going to go with: "People feel the same way I do?"

[Mike C @ Sep 25th 2008 3:09PM]

because the cat is going to grandma's house?

[Rogue_Genius @ Sep 25th 2008 3:23PM]

Because his pic is awesome. Nerds have a soft spot for cats. Who knew?

Adorable kittens FTW! :D

[Testies, Testies, 1, 2... 3? @ Sep 25th 2008 6:27PM]

It's that most everyone feels the same as you... about cats... about the RIAA...