How about some American legal technicalities for your lunch break? There was a potentially interesting decision in the US courts recently that could impact on the appeal of Jammie Thomas, one of the more prominent American P2P file-sharers who famously fought the litigation pursued against her by the Recording Industry Association Of America and lost.
As you may remember, the jury in the Jammie case applied statutory rules under US copyright laws to calculate what damages the record companies were due for the file-sharer's infringement. Guided by the statutory provisions, albeit by choosing a figure at the upper end of the damages bracket, they awarded the record companies $80,000 per song. As Thomas was accused of sharing 24 songs, that worked out at $1.92 million in total, considerably more than the few grand out of court settlement she would have been initially offered by the RIAA.
Some would say $1.92 million for sharing 24 songs on the internet is ridiculous, given how many people were file-sharing at the time, not to mention the fact Thomas has no way of paying such a high sum. She is appealing the high damages. And as common sense isn't always relevant in these scenarios, her legal people need to find a legal argument as to why $1.92 million is just too much.
They will almost certainly rely on an American court case called BMW v Gore, which is significant because it saw the US Supreme Court curtail the amount of 'punitive damages' American courts award (punitive damages being awarded by civil courts to punish dodgy dealings, or at least to deter others from repeating such practices, rather than just compensating the claimant for their loss).
In the Gore case, BMW had been ordered to pay $2 million (originally $4 million) in punitive damages. The Supreme Court said this was too much, and that courts awarding punitive damages needed to bear in mind actual damage and the severity of punishment that would be likely were this a criminal case.
Jammie's legal team will probably argue that, under the principles set out in BMW v Gore, $1.92 million is just far too big. Which is why the new case of Verizon v OnlineNIC is important.
The specifics of this case are unimportant - all you need to know is that the defendants were ordered to pay $33.15 million in statutory damages, based on the damages provisions set out in the relevant US legislation (the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act as it happens). OnlineNIC's people said that that was just too high a sum, and that it fell foul of the principles set out in the Gore case for calculating punitive damages.
But the court overseeing the new case ruled that Gore is irrelevant, because what was at play in the OnlineNIC case, like the Jammie case, were "statutory damages" and not "punitive damages".
All of which arguably means BMW v Gore is of no use to Jammie Thomas in her appeal. Nor Joel Tenenbaum should he appeal the damages awarded in his big P2P court battle earlier this year (he was ordered to pay $675,000). Technically the ruling in the OnlineNIC case isn't binding on the judges considering the Jamme or Joel appeals, but legal experts reckon it certainly hinders the file-sharers' chances of getting their damages payments drastically reduced.
As previously reported, Tenenbaum plans to declare himself bankrupt if the $675,000 stands after appeal.