A Significant US Copyright Award for File-Sharing

On October 4, 2007, a US federal jury ordered Ms Jammie Thomas to pay $222,000 to copyright owners for making copyrighted music available online, the first such suit to result in a verdict. The plaintiffs, including Virgin Records America Inc, Capitol Records Inc, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Arista Records LLC, Interscope Records, Warner Bros Records Inc and UMG Recordings Inc, had alleged that Thomas shared 1,702 songs in violation of their copyrights. US copyright law allows damages of $750 to $30,000 per infringement, and up to $150,000 if the violation is found to be "wilful". The jury held that Thomas should pay $9,250 for each of 24 songs that she made available via the Kazaa file-sharing service. Thomas has said she will appeal the verdict based on the jury's finding that "making songs available" online violates copyright. Since 2003, record companies have filed 26,000 file-sharing lawsuits in the United States. Most of the suits have settled for a few thousand dollars. The Recording Industry Association of American (RIAA) says the lawsuits have mitigated illegal sharing but, overall, it admits that music file-sharing is on the rise. Similar file-sharing lawsuits have not been seen in Canada since the Canadian Recording Industry Association's (CRIA) unsuccessful suit against alleged file sharers several years ago (see E-TIPS®, "Federal Court of Canada Dismisses CRIA's Motion for Disclosure in File Sharing Suit", Vol 2, No 21, March 31, 2004). Topping the list of the reasons for this may be Canada's private copying levy which has been interpreted to extend to personal, non-commercial downloading, and the funds generated by the levy provide a form of compensation for peer-to-peer downloading. Secondly, the Canadian Copyright Act allows a court to set damages below $200 per infringement, making it unlikely that an award as high as that in the Thomas case would be made in Canada. Finally, the Canadian music industry seems to be divided on the issue of litigation – in fact, Canadian musicians and some leading record labels have spoken out against such lawsuits. For a related news story, see: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/story/2007/10/04/music-court.html For commentary by Prof Michael Geist, visit his blog at: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2277/125/ Summary by: Clare McCurley