Update: RIAA File-Sharing Litigation: Obama Administration Backs RIAA

Hello!

I am finally back! I have been traveling for the past few weeks giving presentations and writing articles.

Previously I wrote a post about the RIAA vs. Tenenbaum case. This case is one of several high profile file-sharing lawsuits currently being reviewed by the courts.

Another case that has garnered national attention is the RIAA vs. Thomas-Rasset. Ms. Thomas-Rasset purchased songs from I-tunes and shared them with peers. A Minnesota federal jury found her guilty of copyright infringement and the court ordered her to pay $80,000 for each of the 24 downloaded song she shared. Her jury verdict came to a whopping $1.92 million dollars. She is now seeking to vacate the judgment for being too excessive.

However, last week, the Obama Administration submitted arguments in favor of the jury verdict. The Justice Department argued that the jury verdict was not too excessive considering the nature of file sharing. So although Ms. Thomas-Rasset may have shared the files with only a select group of individuals, those individuals continued to share the files with other users and so on. So the file sharing continues.

Clearly, The Obama Administration is intellectual property ownership friendly and is asserting its position as such. The RIAA really needs this support from the Justice Department considering the negative publicity and backlash it has received for going after individual consumers. It will be interesting to see if the judge actually reduced the monetary award. I will keep you posted.

I welcome your thoughts.