RIAA Face Appeal From Raging Mother
Jammie Thomas, the American mother who was subjected to the RIAA’s wrath in a willful copyright infringement verdict last week and ordered to pay $222,000.00 in fines, plans to appeal the decision.
Thomas, with her attorney Brian Toder, appeared on CNN to announce her decision to appeal. The appeal will be based on jury instruction no. 15 which, according to ArsTechnica.
told the jurors that they could find Thomas liable for copyright infringement if she made the recordings available over a file-sharing network, ‘regardless of whether actual distribution has been shown.’
The contentious question now is whether the act of making a file available over a P2P filesharing network — as was the case in Thomas’ trial — can properly be described as ‘distribution’ under the Copyright Act. This is something that lawyers will still argue over and there appears to have been no final decision made yet.
The verdict may be overturned, but that would just place the parties in the same position they were in before the case. With the RIAA’s reputation they will most likely pursue this to the bitter end. Either way it seems that Ms. Thomas is in for a rough ride over the next few months.
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