So, does last week's mega-bucks damages ruling against file-sharing mother Jammie Thomas ruin the case of those legal academics who have been increasingly vocal of late in their criticism of the US record industry's internet copyright litigation - even though the Record Industry Association Of America have officially stopped pursuing lawsuits against individual file-sharers?
They're all still talking about it, even though the RIAA has started distancing itself from its former excessive individual file-sharer litigation programme, because of the still-outstanding RIAA v Tenenbaum case, which is being led for the defence by Harvard law professor Charles Nesson. The prof hopes to fight the case, in part at least, on constitutional matters which, he reckons, overrule any recent interpretations in court of US copyright law regards file-sharing.
In that regards, one fellow RIAA critic says, the Jammie ruling may go in Nesson's favour. Responding to the news Thomas had been ordered to pay $1.92 million in damages following her second copyright infringement trial, Lawyer Ray Beckerman wrote last week: "The nonsensical exorbitancy of the verdict actually enhances the constitutionality argument, demonstrating how open-ended the statute is if the RIAA's wild-eyed interpretation of it is allowed to survive".