Don't stop believing in the RIAA's capacity for evil

Stop me if you've heard this one, but: Illegally downloading music files is probably not a good idea. And if you don't believe me, there's a 32-year-old Minnesota mom who might convince you otherwise.

Last week, a second jury convicted Jammie Thomas-Rasset of using her Kazaa account to illegally download 24 songs. The actual number of songs she allegedly snagged is roughly around 1700, but she got sued for just these 24 little ditties.

The first jury found her guilty and assessed a fine of $222,000, or roughly $9K per tune. Jury #2 decided jury #1 simply didn't appreciate Vanessa Williams or Journey enough, and upped the ante to nearly $2 million, making those songs worth $80,000 a pop.

I admit, "Don't Stop Believing" does sound better if you haven't heard it for a while, but is it $71,000 better? That's kind of hard to swallow. Reactions from the blogosphere ranged from "insane" to "friggin' insane" to words I am not allowed to repeat here because there might be children present.

First, let us stipulate for the record that the defendant is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. She's more like a spoon, or maybe a plastic spork.

Judging by what I've read of her defense (Ars Technica has served up a lovely summary of the case), Thomas-Rasset's attorneys didn't deny music files were downloaded to her computer, they simply tried to claim the ex-boyfriend did it, or maybe the ex-husband, or maybe gremlins snuck into her house in the middle of the night and logged on to Kazaa using the same online handle she's used for 15 years.

The human-to-computer connection is almost impossible to prove without eyewitnesses or videotape. Trouble is, the RIAA didn't have to prove Thomas-Rasset actually swapped files. They just had to convince a jury of that. The fact that Jammie appears to have tried to fool the RIAA by submitting the wrong hard drive to them during the first trial's original discovery period probably didn't help her case. Just a hunch.

The file-swappin' Minnesota mom says she's broke, so I guess the record companies will have to send their goons over to her house to collect her furniture and sell it on eBay. Maybe she can work off the debt by agreeing to wash RIAA chief Mitch Bainwol's cars.

However, PCWorld's JR Raphael points out the excessive size of the award could play to Thomas-Rasset's favor:

The Supreme Court has previously indicated that "grossly excessive" punitive damage awards are a violation of the U.S. Constitution. An award can be considered "grossly excessive" if there's too big of a gap between the actual harm done and the amount of money being named. Courts can also consider the "degree of reprehensibility" of the defendant's actions, along with how the penalty compares to similar ones issued in the past.

So it's remotely possible some good may come from this case by revisiting the insane financial penalties tacked onto copyright infringement (up to $150K per violation). It won't let Jammie Thomas-Rasset off the hook (at least, not entirely), but it might help other folks who get squashed by bloodless corporate cartels.

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