Remember the story about the Boston University student who was hit with a whopping $675K penalty for filesharing some of his music online? Well a district court judge overruled the jury that the penalty was “unconstitutional” and decreased it by 10 fold! That is a striking victory, of sorts. Tenenbaum says he still can’t pay the penalty that has been reduced by 90%.
The judge Nancy Gertner said in her ruling wrote: “There is no question that this reduced award is still severe, even harsh. It not only adequately compensates the plaintiffs for the relatively minor harm that Tenenbaum caused them; it sends a strong message that those who exploit peer-to-peer networks to unlawfully download and distribute copyrighted works run the risk of incurring substantial damages awards.”
But the RIAA harshly criticized the move by saying that “substituted its judgment for that of 10 jurors as well as Congress [and ignored the] profound economic and artistic harm to the recording industry that occurs when people illegally share songs online”.
Pundits will recall that many people criticized the legal team behind Tenenbaum as incompetent because they tried to argue that the fair use principle protected all filesharing which the judge found much too broad an interpretation. The legal team was headed by a Harvard law professor and a team of students who backed up the legal research.
