The Department of Justice says the jury's $222K damage assessment in the RIAA lawsuit against Jammie Thomas is constitutional, in what appears to be a fairly serious blow to American file sharing defendants [updated in light of comment].
Thomas had been found guilty of sharing 24 songs on the Kazaa file sharing network -- an average of $9,250 per song. She and her lawyer argued that the damages were unconstitutional, given that those 24 songs would have cost only $23.76 on iTunes.
According to Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Bucholtz, the damages are not "so severe and oppressive as to be wholly disproportioned to the offense."
The next logical question is, "well then, what level of damages would be proportioned to the offense?" Bucholtz claims to be stumped. In his brief, he writes, "it is impossible to calculate the damages caused by a single infringement, particularly for infringement that occurs over the internet."
So the damages are impossible to calculate -- nonetheless, they were calculated to be $9,250 per song.
Part of the $221,976.24 discrepancy between what Jammie Thomas couldhave paid for the songs and what she now owes for downloading andsharing them is due to the idea that if enough peoplehear about the high damage amount, they'll be less likely to downloadand share files online. Bucholtz claims that the Copyright Act requires the damages not only tocompensate record labels for lost sales, but also to serve a "deterrentpurpose" by discouraging file sharing by non-defendants.
Some experts, including one we talked to, predicted that the feewould be struck down as unconstitutional, but apparently it will stand, and future RIAA
lawsuit defendants could face similar fees unless something changes.
(via macworld.uk)
