BRAINERD, MA -- December 29, 2008: The RIAA has been denied in its quest to appeal a Minnesota federal judge's decision to order a retrial in the only one of tens of thousands of peer-to-peer copyright-infringement lawsuits that has gone to trial. The RIAA won that case in 2007, with a $220,000 award against Jammie Thomas, but Judge Michael Davis declared a mistrial after concluding that his instructions to the jury were in error.
Davis had told the jury that simply making songs available on KaZaa constituted copyright infringement, but has since said actual distribution must be shown -- that is, the label plaintiffs have to show that music was actually downloaded from Thomas' computer by other KaZaa users. The RIAA has said it is almost impossible to prove infringement at that level.
The Thomas retrial is now set for March 9, but whether the labels will proceed is an open question: The RIAA has said it is dropping its campaign of lawsuits against individuals in favor of approaching Internet service providers in the hopes of having the ISPs warn suspected infringers, then potentially slow or block their Internet access.
