‘Tenenbaum’ P2P Decision on Damages Award Expected in Few Months from Appeals Court
A decision is expected in the next couple of months on whether the amount of damages awarded in the Sony v. Tenenbaum P2P case is constitutional, said lawyers familiar with the case. The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston heard statements Monday from lawyers representing Tenenbaum and the RIAA. Tenenbaum, a Harvard University student represented by Harvard law professor Charles Nesson and his students, was sued by Sony in 2007 for illegally downloading music, the complaint said. Tenenbaum was originally ordered to pay $675,000 in damages but that amount was reduced to $67,500 by a district court judge in July 2010 (WID July 13 p3). RIAA and the Department of Justice appealed the decision last year.
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The defense stuck to its original arguments, saying the original jury award was unconstitutionally excessive and the judges must consider proper application of the Copyright Act in the digital age, said law student Jason Harrow, who represented Tenenbaum at the hearing. “In the forefront of the judges’ minds was ‘What is this Copyright Act designed to do?'” he said. When it was developed, “did anyone consider Joel Tenenbaum sitting in his parent’s house downloading songs and doing what others in his generation are doing?” he said.
In December 2009, U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner ordered the defendant to pay $22,500 for each of the 30 songs he downloaded. Gertner amended the judgment last year. “No plausible rationale can be crafted to support the [$675,000] award,” she wrote in the order. It’s “wholly out of proportion with the government’s legitimate interests in compensating the plaintiffs and deterring unlawful file-sharing,” the order said.
At the hearing Monday, the appeals judges also raised questions about the court’s role in reviewing a jury’s verdict, said Paul Clement, a former U.S. solicitor general who represented the RIAA. “There was healthy debate in brief about whether there should be less deferential tests or more deferential tests” in reviewing a jury’s verdict, he said. “File sharing and peer to peer technology pose a unique threat to the value of copyrights and the Copyright Act takes that seriously.” The jury’s original verdict is the kind you'd expect under the act, he added. Clement said he wouldn’t be surprised to see a decision this summer.
"We've contended from the beginning that this campaign from the recording industry never should have come to be applied to a college student in a dorm room using software,” Harrow said. “We hope there'll be a decision in a few months.”