Sony BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum (1st Circuit Court) is the appeals lawsuit which followed the U.S. District Court case Sony BMG v. Tenenbaum, No. 07cv11446-NG (D. Mass. Dec. 7, 2009). The initial district court decision awarded the plaintiffs $675,000 in statutory damages for Joel Tenenbaum's willful copyright infringement via peer-to-peer file-sharing of 30 songs. Tenenbaum then challenged the constitutionality of the damage award and asked for a retrial or a reduction of the award via common law remittitur. The district court judge rejected Tenenbaum's arguments in favor of a retrial, and declined to invoke remittitur because, in this case, it would prompt a retrial which would broach the constitutional issues remittitur was intended to avoid. Asserting that the question of the award's constitutionality was unavoidable, the judge reduced the damages to $67,500 on constitutional grounds, reasoning that the damages were effectively punitive, as well as excessive and in violation of Tenenbaum's Due Process rights. Both parties then cross-appealed to the First Circuit Court of Appeals—Sony, et al., for full reinstatement of the original damages, and Tenenbaum challenging both liability and damages. The First Circuit rejected all of Tenenbaum's arguments, affirmed the denial of Tenenbaum's motion for a new trial, reversed the District Court's decision to reduce the damages, reinstated the original award, and remanded on the question of the common law remittitur. Background Defendant and cross-appellant Joel Tenenbaum was an undergraduate student studying physics and mathematics at Goucher College in Maryland 2005 prior to the original litigation in the Massachusetts District Court. During this period, Joel Tenenbaum downloaded and distributed, via a peer-to-peer file-sharing network, a number of songs owned by the plaintiffs. While the plaintiffs are listed collectively as Sony BMG Music Entertainment, the plaintiffs in both the district court case and the subsequent appeal actually included five record companies: Sony BMG Music Entertainment Arista Records, LLC, a subsidiary of Sony BMG Warner Bros. Records, part of Warner Music Group Atlantic Recording Corporation, part of Warner Music Group UMG Recordings, Inc., part of Universal Music Group As the plaintiffs are all members of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and it is the RIAA which makes public statements about the case, the case is sometimes informally referenced as RIAA v. Tenenbaum. However, references more commonly use Sony, Sony BMG, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, and the more precise Sony BMG Music Entertainment, et al. as the name of