Judge confirms $675k filesharing fine but calls law unfair
A federal judge has formally approved a $675,000 fine against filesharer Joel Tenenbaum but questioned the fairness of the penalties available under the law. Judge Nancy Gertner also said Tenenbaum’s lawyers may have blown a potential defense by presenting too wide an argument.
Tenenbaum was convicted in August on 30 charges of illegally sharing copyrighted music. At the time Judge Gertner told the jury they were duty bound to return a guilty verdict as Tenenbaum had admitted the offense during the trial, despite his not guilty plea.
His defense had rested not on whether he shared the files, but on whether or not the sharing was covered by fair use provisions of copyright law. Gertner examined this defense before the case and refused to allow it to be made during the trial, ruling that the proposed interpretation was so broad it would make copyright meaningless.
She reiterated this point in a ruling this week, noting, “The Court was prepared to consider a more expansive fair use argument than other courts have credited – perhaps one supported by facts specific to this individual and this unique period of rapid technological change.”
In a point which will surely be noted by future defendants, she noted that the court might have considered a defense based on the idea of downloading tracks you already owned in physical form, downloading merely to see if you liked the music, or even downloading because the tracks weren’t available to buy online. Of course, that’s no guarantee such a defense would have been successful.
Gertner also said she had serious concerns about the “astronomical” penalties which could be awarded in such cases. As the jury ruled Tenenbaum had “wilfully” breached copyright, he could have been fined as much as $4.5 million.
It’s now thought Tenenbaum’s lawyers will attempt to take the case to the Supreme Court. Such an appeal wouldn’t be based on the facts of the case, but rather whether the penalties available to a jury under copyright law are constitutional. Their argument would likely be that the wide range between the minimum and maximum fines per offense show that awards have an excessive degree of punishment rather than mere restitution, punishment they believe shouldn’t apply in a copyright case.
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