The man who failed in his bid to effectively have all filesharing declared legal has been fined $675,000 for copyright infringement. But there are legal and financial factors which make it unlikely Joel Tenenbaum with ever hand over the full amount.

The jury, which had already been ordered to declare Tenenbaum guilty of copyright infringement, ruled that he had acted willfully in doing so. That potentially increased his maximum fine per offense from $30,000 to $150,000. In the event that proved irrelevant as the jury settled on a fine of $22,500 for each of his 30 offenses.

The award gives further evidence to the idea that jury damages in such cases are something of a lottery. Whereas Tenenbaum was hit with $22,500 per track, another high-profile defendant, Jammie Thomas-Rassett was fined $9,250 per track in her original trial and $80,000 per track in her second trial.

With few if any significant differences to the cases in the three trials, it seems that jury amounts largely come down to how the jury members view filesharing, how they take personally to the defendant, and how good different jury members are at arguing their case while negotiating a figure. That’s a strange form of justice.

This isn’t to say Tenenbaum will be writing a $675,000 check any time soon. It doesn’t really matter whether the fine was $675,000 or the potential maximum $4.5 million: either way, as his lawyer put it to Ars Technica, it’s “a bankrupting award”.

There’s also a slim possibility that the legal process might overturn the award. Tenenbaum’s lawyers asked before the trial that the claim for statutory damages be dismissed on the grounds that it breached the Constitution. Their argument was that because juries have so much leeway, it effectively means some awards have a punitive (punishment) element; if that’s the case, the maximum penalties could be considered unfairly high.

At the time, Judge Nancy Gertner announced she would only consider this point if and when Tenenbaum was convicted. She’ll now decide whether or not to throw out the damages; if she doesn’t, Tenenbaum’s lawyers may pursue the matter in a higher court.

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Entry was posted on Monday, August 3rd, 2009 at 11:49 am under Legal, Music, Piracy.

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