Expert Witness Blog
After two days of testimony, a Duluth, Minnesota, jury found that Jammie Thomas was liable for infringing Capitol Records copyrights on all 24 of the 24 recordings at issue. The jury awarded $222,000 in statutory damages after finding that the infringement was “willful.” RIAA’s expert witness, Dr. Doug Jacobson, examined date stamps on Thomas’s hard drive. The computer security expert witness is with the security business Palisade Systems. Eric Bangeman, writing for Ars Technica also writes:
The first case has gone to trial, and the verdict is in. The music labels now have a notch on their belt, while a woman who spent thousands of dollars on their product is now faced with a large judgment.
The RIAA hopes that this and the 20,000 other cases serve as a deterrent to would-be file-sharers, but the question of whether or not the music industry is engendering so much hostility and bad press with its campaign that it outweighs any short-term benefits remains. With a verdict in their favor, the RIAA hopes to ratchet the campaign of fear up a notch and says it will press forward with its legal campaign.