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Tenenbaum Postscript


From Ars Technica:  Massachusetts federal district court judge Nancy Gertner, who presided in the file-sharing trial of Boston University graduate student Joel , this week entered default judgments in some file-sharing cases.  Judge Gertner awarded the statutory damages of $750 per downloaded song, or about $7,500 for each of the defendants who failed to contest the ’s claims. In the case the jury awarded the damages of $22,500 per downloaded song, a total of $675,000.   We always say jury trials are a crap shoot.  ’s jury was obviously unsympathetic to him, his counsel, and his argument–such as it was.  Using Gertner’s recent calculation had he failed to contest the ’s claim he would have been ordered to pay damages of $22,500 (30 songs * $750).   And, of course, he could have settled for something in the range of $3-4,000.

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This was written by David Randall. Posted on Friday, October 2, 2009, at 6:26 pm. Filed under Copyright Law. Tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback.

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