Infamous file-sharer Jammie Thomas-Rasset asked the Supreme Court on Monday to review a jury's conclusion that she pay the recording industry $222,000 for downloading and sharing two dozen copyrighted songs on the now-defunct file-sharing service Kazaa.
Thomas-Rasset, the first person to defend herself against a Recording Industry Association of America file-sharing case, said the damages were unconstitutionally excessive and were not rationally related to the harm she caused to the music labels.
"Put more plainly: In a civil case, Thomas–Rasset cannot be punished for the harm inflicted on the recording industry by file sharing in general; while that would no doubt help accomplish the industry’s and Congress's goal of deterring copyright infringement, singling out and punishing an individual in a civil case to a degree entirely out of proportion with her individual offense is not a constitutional means of achieving that goal," the petition (.pdf) said.
The Supreme Court has never heard an RIAA file-sharing case and has previously declined the two other file-sharing cases brought before it.
Thomas-Rasset's case concerns an 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision in September that upheld a jury's award against Thomas-Rasset. (.pdf)
The case dates back to 2007, and has a tortuous history involving a mistrial and three separate verdicts for the same offense -- $222,000, $1.92 million and $1.5 million. Under the case’s latest iteration, a jury last year awarded the RIAA the $1.5 million, which the court reduced to $54,000, ruling that the jury's award for "stealing 24 songs for personal use is appalling."
The convoluted decision of the appeals court in September, however, found that the original $222,000 verdict from the first case should stand, and that U.S. District Judge Michael Davis of Minnesota should not have declared a mistrial in the first trial over a flawed jury instruction.
In her appeal to the Supreme Court, Thomas-Rasset argues that the Copyright Act, which allows damages of up to $150,000 per infringement, is unconstitutionally excessive. But the Obama administration, which weighed in on the case when it was in the appellate courts, said the large damages award was allowed because it "is reasonably related to furthering the public interest (.pdf) in protecting original works of artistic literary, and musical expression."
The only other file-sharer to challenge an RIAA lawsuit at trial was Joel Tenenbaum, a Massachusetts college student, whose case followed Thomas-Rasset's. The Supreme Court declined, without comment, to hear his case in May, however, letting stand a Boston federal jury's award of $675,000 against him for sharing 30 songs.
In the third RIAA file-sharing case against an individual to go before the Supreme Court's justices, the high court declined to review a petition that would have tested the so-called "innocent infringer" defense to copyright infringement.
Generally, an innocent infringer is someone who does not know she or he is committing copyright infringement. Such downloaders get a $200 innocent-infringer fine.
Most of the thousands of RIAA file-sharing cases against individuals have settled out of court for a few thousand dollars. In 2008, the RIAA ceased a five-year campaign it had launched to sue individual file sharers and, with the Motion Picture Association of America, has since convinced internet service providers to begin taking punitive action against copyright scofflaws, including possibly terminating their service.
