RIAA Loses Ability to Appeal in Jammie Thomas Case

Written by Jorge

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RIAA Loses Ability to Appeal in Jammie Thomas Case

The Jammie Thomas case has recently took a turn for the worse for the RIAA.

Is merely putting a song in a shared folder copyright infringement in the United States? That’s what the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) was hoping for, but at seemingly the last possible moment, the precedent that would dictate such has slipped through the RIAAs fingers.

Ray Beckerman’s blog, Recording Industry vs. People, notes that the RIAA has lost the motion for an interlocutory appeal. Such an appeal in this case would have granted the RIAA, essentially, permission to appeal the judge’s decision that suggested that he improperly instructed the jurors during the initial Jammie Thomas case to consider that copyrighted song files in a shared directory was considered illegal. There’s probably no doubt that the RIAA is unhappy with these latest turn of events.

Things seemed to be going the RIAAs way during the trial all the way up to the point where the jury, based on the judge’s instruction that copyrighted songs in a shared directory was considered illegal, fined Jammie Thomas $222,000 for copyright infringement.

Then, almost unexpectedly, the judge had second thoughts on the instruction that more than likely swayed the jurors to find Thomas guilty of copyright infringement. He said that he made a mistake in giving such instructions to the jurors in the first place. The RIAA, sensing a crack in their seemingly solid court victory, argued that the judge did not make an error and that he correctly instructed the jurors in the first place. The judge didn’t seem to buy into the argument and, ultimately, the RIAA then moved to appeal the judge’s decision. That move was just recently denied. It doesn’t appear as though the case is over, but the RIAA seems to have a number of cracks in their side of the case at this point. Clearly, things are, so far, shifting into Thomas’ favour.