Jammie juror justifies $222,000 downloading deterrent

Posted on 11 Oct 2007 at 10:57

Some of the jurors who handed down a $220,000 damages verdict against a convicted file sharer wanted to impose the maximum $3.6 million penalty, AP reports.

Juror Lisa Reinke told the news agency that they quickly agreed to find Jammie Thomas guilty of sharing 24 songs, but disputed the amount of damages to award to the plaintiff record companies.

"A few said we could go up to 150 [thousand] and then other people said, 'No, that's way too high'," she told AP. "We just all discussed it and gave our views and came up with an agreeable amount."

They settled at $9,250 for each song that would have cost 99 cents to buy, despite no evidence that any song had been downloaded. That fact will form the basis of Thomas's appeal.

Reinke said that a lower penalty would have been no deterrent "to stop the illegal downloading of music". Thomas, however, like all the other people pursued by the music industry, was not charged with downloading, which suggests that the jury may not have had a 100% grasp of the case. Indeed one did not even have a computer at home.

Author: Simon Aughton

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