Jammie Thomas-Rasset is known as the first U.S. resident to have file sharing lawsuits go to trial and verdict. Although she lied in her testimony and refused to accept responsibility for her actions, federal judge Michael Davis decided that the $1.5 million award fined against her was unconstitutional. The new amount is cut down to $54,000, or $2,250 per song that she was caught sharing on KaZaA.

Remember Kazaa? It was the P2P network that sprang out of nowhere after Napster was shut down by the RIAA where people shared music and movies. The original company to develop Kazaa sold the application to Sharman Networks. Then the movie and music industry executives promptly sued Sharman.

Jammie Thomas is a Native American single mother of two.  She is from Brainerd, Minnesota and became the first person to have a file-sharing copyright infringement lawsuit brought against her by the Recording Industry Association America (RIAA).

Initially Thomas was found guilty of 24 acts of infringement using Kazaa and was ordered to pay $222,000.  However the judge gave her motion for a new trial.

Brian Toder, Thomas’ lawyer told U.S. District Judge Michael Davis of Minnesota that he billed $130,000 of his own money for the first trial.  That money will never be recovered.  Judge Davis has not ruled yet on whether Toder will be released from representation.  The RIAA doesn’t have a problem with Toder’s removal, but objects against having him as a continuance.

The RIAA has sued over 30,000 individuals regarding copyright infringement.  Most of those sharing music have settled out of court for several thousands of dollars.

Keven Bermeister and Michael Speck were on opposite sides of the courtroom at one point.  Bermeister was being sued for millions of dollars for being one of the founders of KaZaa with co-founder Nikki Hemming.  Michael Speck, the head of the Music Industry Piracy Investigation was behind the lawsuit against Bermeister.  But in a rather ironic twist of events, Speck and Bermeister have decided to start a new company together.

Brilliant Digital Entertainment
The new company is called Brilliant Digital Entertainment.  Brilliant Digital Entertainment will be selling access to a GlobalFileRegistry (GFR).  GFR is a solution for anti-piracy companies to deter copyright content from spreading across social networks and search engines.

When a pirate searches for specific movies or music, they will be presented with the opportunity to purchase the content.  If they do buy it, then the ISP will get some of the revenue earned.  Brilliant hasn’t launched their product yet, but development is underway.  ISPs and law enforcement agencies are interested in the software.

“When the architecture of the internet that has our technology recognises one of those proven illicit files, it blocks it, disconnects the link to it and adds to the search results the opportunity to purchase the legitimate material,” stated Speck.  “At that point there is no other information collected – the entire action revolves around the identification of the content and action taken against illicit content; there’s an absolute protection of privacy.”

Consequences
However, David Vaile, Executive Director at the University of NSW cyberspace law and policy centre and vice-chairman of the Australian Privacy Foundation indicated that ISPs activity logs may become a honeypot for the music industry if they wanted to prosecute pirates.

Will It Work?
The problem with piracy is that it is a fairly loose term.  If I watch a music video on YouTube that has the whole song streaming?  Is it piracy?  What if I watch it on the Universal Music Group channel?  People have been paying for music less because the full track is available to listen to on sites like YouTube and even on Yahoo! Music.

To add to the confusion, RealPlayer has offered ways to download videos from YouTube.  If I download a video from the Universal Music Group channel on YouTube, is it illegal?  These are questions that can make being a pirate unconsciously confusing for any day-to-day computer user.