Topic: COPYRIGHT - on May 16, 2012 at 2:02:00 PM CEST
Tenenbaum To Supreme Court: Let's Get This Constitutional Debate On Statutory Rates For Copyright Infringement Rolling
You may recall that, in the case of Joel Tenenbaum -- who is in a legal battle with some major lbels for file sharing -- a jury awarded the labels $675,000 for the sharing of just a few songs. The judge, Nancy Gertner, pointed out that this seemed unconstitutionally excessive and reduced the award to $67,500 -- knocking 90% off the jury's award. The appeals court in the case reinstated the original $675,000 on procedural grounds. It said that Judge Gertner jumped the gun in leaping to the constitutional question, rather than using remittitur, as had been done in the Jammie Thomas case. Remittitur would allow the RIAA to have the case happen all over again with a new jury. In the Jammie Thomas case there have already been three trials.
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