Judge Cuts $675,000 Fine in Downloading Case

RIAA

A federal judge has slashed damages in a closely watched music downloading case by nine-tenths of the original amount.

Last July, a jury awarded $675,000 to four record labels for the 30 songs downloaded and shared by Joel Tenenbaum, a graduate student at Boston University.

On Friday, however, Federal District Judge Nancy Gertner ruled that the penalty was “unconstitutionally excessive” — so high, in fact, that the amount “bears no meaningful relationship” to the government’s “legitimate interests in compensating copyright owners and deterring infringement.” She lowered the amount to $67,500.

Mr. Tenenbaum and his attorney, Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson, had challenged the damages award on constitutional grounds.

Judge Gertner, in reducing the damages, noted that “for many years, businesses complained that punitive damages imposed by juries were out of control, were unpredictable, and imposed crippling financial costs on companies.”

Some of those businesses have gotten relief from the courts, she noted, and added that this sends an important message: “the Constitution protects not only criminal defendants from the imposition of ‘cruel and unusual punishments,’ U.S. Const. amend. VIII, but also civil defendants facing arbitrarily high punitive awards.”

The Recording Industry Association of America issued a statement about the ruling, stating “we disagree with court’s reasoning and analysis, and we will contest this ruling.”
The group stated that “the court has substituted its judgment for that of 10 jurors as well as Congress.”

But Professor Nesson applauded Judge Gertner’s ruling, saying in an interview, “I consider it the first step in the right direction of recognizing the abusiveness of the copyright industry’s campaign against individual consumers — but it’s just a first step,” he said.

Mr. Tenenbaum’s Web site about the case states that “A $67,500 price tag for 30 songs is still a bill Joel cannot afford,” adding, “Songs on iTunes are about $.99-$1.29 a piece. ”

Professor Nesson noted that even though the judge “dropped it by an order of magnitude, she’d have to drop it by another order of magnitude to get into his range.”

By JOHN SCHWARTZ NY Times

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