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"Say you were to step back in time, to the moment before you were aware that copying and sharing music, either through tangible media or virtual transfer, was illegal - and could be a crime prosecutable with steep fines and perhaps even a jail term (if you happened to be convicted of particularly heavy violations). Would you prefer to see damages conditioned to fit considerably less intense profile? One described as \u201Cinnocent infringement,\u201D perhaps? That\u2019s what the defendant in Maverick v. Harper is hoping to realize.\nThe case takes place in San Antonio court, and involves what originally was a 16 year old girl (now college age), who admitted to copyright infringement but has sought \u201C\u2018innocent infringer\u2019 status,\u201D according to Ray Beckerman of the website Recording Industry vs The People.\nThe RIAA, according to Beckerman, aimed for summary judgment in light of the defendant\u2019s plea of ignorance about her transgression(s). But interestingly enough, the court has \u201Cdenied the RIAA\u2019s motion...unless (it) agrees to accept $200 per infringement.\u201D\nThat number is rather meaningful, actually. The court details its position:\nThe damages provision of the Copyright Act provides that a plaintiff may elect to seekminimum damages of $750 per work. 17 U.S.C. \u00A7 504(c)(1). However, it also provides that \u201Cwhere the infringer . . . was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright, the court in its discretion may reduce the award of statutory damages to a sum of not less than $200.\u201D 17 U.S.C. \u00A7 504(c)(2). The defendant has the burden to prove the lack of intent necessary for innocent infringement.\nThe court then explained the defendants stated position on the matter:\nDefendant admitted that she owned compact discs. However, both in her affidavit and in her deposition, Defendant claimed that she believed using KaZaA and similar products to be akin to listening to radio over the internet and did not know that the Recordings were being either downloaded or distributed. She further claimed that prior to this lawsuit, she did not have any understanding of copyright infringement.\nInsofar as the defendant's need to \u201Cprove the lack of intent necessary for innocent infringement,\" the court had this to say:\nAt the summary judgment stage, all factual disputes must be construed in the light most favorable to the non-moving party\u2014in this case, Defendant. Anderson, 477 U.S. at 255. Defendant has the burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that her actions constituted innocent infringement. 17 U.S.C. \u00A7 502(c)(2). Plaintiffs have not introduced any evidence to contradict that Defendant did not have an understanding of the nature of file-sharing programs and copyright sophisticated enough to have reason to know that her actions infringed Plaintiffs\u2019 copyrights. Therefore, the Court finds that a fact issue exists as to whether Defendant was an innocent infringer.\nThere you have it. A lesser charge for the defendant, it seems. But I must say, even with the -$550 \u201Cvoucher\u201D put up by the court, $200 per work still puzzles me. If we\u2019re to take $0.99 as the generally accepted price for a digital music track today, a 20,000% premium is peculiarly high for an infraction. Yes, the real damages to the RIAA could be quite high, given the amount of illegal proliferation of music on the Web. But one could perhaps just as convincingly argue the opposite. That they are not so high on an individual basis. As it goes in the peer-to-peer realm, the number of seeders, like leechers, is high. Given the fact that there is room for \u201Cdoubt,\u201D as it were, at least in a legal sense, damages could do with a major decrease. All the more so if a defendant is judged an \u201Cinnocent infringer.\u201D"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2008/08/10/riaa-texas/>