Judges declares mistrial, overturns verdict in file-sharing case

[mhendo]

Judge Declares Mistrial in RIAA-Jammie Thomas Trial

A federal judge on Wednesday set aside the nation’s first and only federal jury verdict against a peer-to-peer file sharer for distributing copyrighted music on a peer-to-peer network without the labels’ authorization.

U.S. District Judge Michael Davis of Duluth, Minnesota, declared a mistrial in the case of Jammie Thomas, a Minnesota mother of three, setting aside the $222,000 penalty levied by a federal jury last year for copyright infringement – $9,250 for each of the 24 infringing music tracks she made publicly available on the Kazaa file sharing network.

The judge apparently decided that the order he issued to the jury–in which he told the members that the RIAA did not have to prove that people actually downloaded people’s songs from Thomas’s computer in order to find her guilty–was erroneous, and that it warranted a mistrial.

I think this is great news. It means that the RIAA has never actually won a court case, and the only victories it has achieved have been the result of intimidating people into forking over money rather than going to trial.