U.S. District Judge Michael Davis of Minnesota originally declared the trial a mistrial, and nullified the jury's $222,000 award against Thomas over her alleged sharing of 24 songs on Kazaa. The mistrial was declared because the judge erroneously told the jury that downloading music from P2P networks constitutes as copyright infringement, when it in fact, does not.
Davis added that "actual distribution of copyrighted music must be shown," meaning that the RIAA must prove that others downloaded the music Thomas was sharing. The RIAA admitted that it would be virtually impossible to do so.
The retrial is scheduled for March 9th.
Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 31 Dec 2008 15:11
