Convicted file sharer launches appeal

Posted on 9 Oct 2007 at 10:00

Thomas, a single mother with two children, faces bankruptcy unless she can overturn the jury's decision to award a collection of major record labels $9,250 per track, despite the lack of any evidence that any of the 24 songs was ever downloaded by a third party.

Her appeal will hinge on this. The jury was told that simply making songs available for others to share amounted to a copyright violation. Thomas's lawyers will counter that copyright can only be violated once a song has been copied by another person downloading it from her PC.

The music industry industry's main trade bodies, the RIAA and the IFPI, insist that making songs available amounts to actively sharing a file; lawyers who have defended people sued by them disagree. Essentially the future of p2p litigation rests on this argument, since the RIAA and IFPi have yet to be able to prove that any files were actually downloaded, as opposed to being made available for download.

Music industry representatives have yet to say whether they intent to pursue Thomas for the money, though even if they don't she will still have to pay legal fees in the region of $60,000.

"We have always made it clear we are reluctant litigators," John Kennedy, IFPI chairman said in a statement. "We do everything possible to persuade people not to leave themselves exposed to litigation. We educate, we warn, we even try and settle before a case gets to court. We derive no great satisfaction from this but hope it will prove a deterrent to others. Our message is: we don't want to litigate - don't leave yourself exposed to litigation."

Pro-sharing campaigners are urging music buyers to boycott any label owned by the four major record companies, hoping that shareholder pressure may force them to abandon their loss-making legal campaign.

Author: Simon Aughton