14 DAY TRIAL // One of the longest copyright infringement cases continues with Joel Tenenbaum requesting a rehearing of the case in which he was fined with $675,000 (472,000 EUR).
TorrentFreak provided the appeal document in which the Boston student argues that previous ruling was erroneous and prejudicial. The case has been going on for five years now and the latest decision comes after in 2009 a jury found him guilty and gave him the monstrous fine.
“The defendant seeks an en banc hearing on one ground: that it is unconstitutional to instruct a jury that it can return an unconstitutionally excessive award,” wrote Harvard law professor Charles Nesson, the one who defends Tenenbaum with the aid of a group of students.
This comes after the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) obtained a ruling in its favor and the defendant was made to pay the six figure sum. Not long after, the penalty was considered unconstitutional and reduced by 90% but just two months later the decision was reversed.
“To instruct the jury that it may ascribe an award in a range of up to $4,500,000 against a noncommercial copyright infringer is punitive, excessive, not authorized by statute, and a denial of due process. Indeed, it is difficult to find the right word,” the latest petition reads.
“The trial judge misinstructed the jury that it could legally ascribe an award 67 times what she herself later found to be the legally permissible constitutional maximum. For each of thirty separately listed songs, the verdict form directed the jury to fill in a blank answering the question, ‘[W]hat damages do you award the Plaintiff for this copyrighted work, from $750 to $150,000?’: This was error, plain and simple.”
Tenenbaum is not considered by anyone to be the notorious pirate who made money by selling bootlegged materials and that's why he hopes the case will be eventually dropped but in the meantime, industry representatives seem to want to make an example out of him and that's why they keep pursuing the case.