RIAA Wins Another $675,000 in Damages from File Sharer

In another case of outrageous damages awarded to the recording industry, a Boston student has been ordered to pay $675,000 for illegally sharing 30 songs with the file-sharing, peer-to-peer application Kazaa. The verdict came after only three hours of deliberation from the jury, once the defendant, Joel Tenenbaum, admitted to sharing the files and to lying to the court.

Tenebaum is only the second from about 18,000 individuals who have been sent warning letters by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to go to court. The case has been in the news for the past several months, mostly due to the unusual approaches his defense lawyer, Harvard Law School Professor Charles Nesson, took, which have irritated the judge presiding a number of times. Tenebaum had his defense case crippled by a number of decisions from judge Nancy Gertner, including baring four expert witnesses and, most importantly, not allowing him to claim fair use of the files.

The evidence presented by the RIAA was also conclusive. He was first charged with sharing 800 files with Kazaa and was then found to continue to share files, using a number of software, since 2000 up to and after he was sued in 2007. What's more, the 25-year-old admitted to all of the charges and also that he lied in his first deposition in September 2008.

After the admission, the judge decided to remove the infringement charge from the jury's deliberation, as the man was clearly guilty, leaving them to determine the amount of damages he would have to pay. After three hours of deliberation, the jury awarded $22,500 in damages per song, for a total of $675,000, but the judge said she would further deliberate if the damages awarded fell under the US Constitution's guarantee of a due process.

The damages, while significant, are smaller than an earlier ruling this year, namely the $1.92 million awarded as damages in the Jammie Thomas-Rasset case, with per song damages coming in at $80,000.