{"id":1004,"date":"2012-09-20T02:15:09","date_gmt":"2012-09-20T02:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncjolt.org\/?p=1004"},"modified":"2020-06-04T20:54:07","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T20:54:07","slug":"eighth-circuit-upholds-damages-award-of-9250song-for-willful-infringement-of-the-copyright-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/blogs\/eighth-circuit-upholds-damages-award-of-9250song-for-willful-infringement-of-the-copyright-act\/","title":{"rendered":"Eighth Circuit Upholds Damages Award of $9,250\/song for Willful Infringement OF the Copyright Act"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tuesday, September 18, 2012, by Drew Hargrove
\nThis month, in Capital Records, Inc. et al. v. Thomas-Rasset et al<\/em><\/a>. the Eighth Circuit held that a trial court\u2019s award of $220,000 ($9,250 per song) in damages for willful copyright infringement was not a violation of due process. \u00a0
\nIn 2005, several record companies began investigating potential copyright infringements.\u00a0 In conducting this investigation the record companies discovered Jammie Thomas-Rasset\u2019s username and song files on KaZaA, a peer-to-peer file sharing internet service.\u00a0 The record companies filed suit under 17 U.S.C. \u00a7106 of the Copyright Act.\u00a0
\nThe case reached the Eighth Circuit after three jury trials.\u00a0 In the first trial, the district court judge instructed the jury that sharing files of songs downloaded without permission is a violation of the Copyright Act, regardless of whether there is proof of \u201cactual distribution.\u201d The jury found in favor of the record companies and it awarded them $220,000 in damages ($9,250 per song).
\nA new trial was granted because the trial court found that it had erred in instructing the jury that the Copyright Act can be violated without proof of \u201cactual distribution.\u201d\u00a0 However, in the new trial, the jury awarded the record companies $1,920,000 in damages ($80,000 per song).\u00a0 The judge remitted the entire verdict to $54,000. Subsequently, the record companies filed for a new trial.\u00a0
\nIn the third trial the jury awarded the record companies $1,500,000 in damages ($62,500 per song) but the judge, again, reduced the verdict to $54,000 and held that $54,000 was the maximum damages allowed under the Due Process Clause.\u00a0 The record companies appealed, seeking reinstatement of the verdict of the first jury trial.
\nAt appeal, the Eight Circuit Court noted that the Supreme Court has found that \u201cCongress possesses a \u2018wide latitude of discretion’ in setting statutory damages.\u201d Since the damages assessed were statutory, not punitive, the court concluded that the damages were not, as the Supreme Court has found, \u201cso severe and oppressive as to be wholly disproportionate to the offense and obviously unreasonable.\u201d\u00a0 The court added that the damages awarded by the jury were well within the range provided by 15 U.S.C \u00a7 504(c) of the Copyright Act. \u00a0The fact that the defendant\u2019s willful infringement was \u201cnoncommercial\u201d was irrelevant because \u201cCongress was well aware of the threat of noncommercial copyright infringement when it established the lower end of the [statutory damages] range.\u201d
\nUnfortunately, the Eight Circuit did not weigh in on whether plaintiffs must show that the alleged copyright infringer \u201cactual distributed\u201d the copyrighted material, which will perpetuate confusion amongst trial courts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tuesday, September 18, 2012, by Drew Hargrove This month, in Capital Records, Inc. et al. v. Thomas-Rasset et al. the Eighth Circuit held that a trial court\u2019s award of $220,000 ($9,250 per song) in damages for willful copyright infringement was not a violation of due process. \u00a0 In 2005, several record companies began investigating potential …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1004"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7694,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004\/revisions\/7694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}