Plaintiffs' Opposition To New Trial and Remittitur Motion
Plaintiffs' Opposition To New Trial and Remittitur Motion
Plaintiffs' Opposition To New Trial and Remittitur Motion
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT ............................................................. 1
ARGUMENT.................................................................................................................................. 5
CONCLUSION............................................................................................................................. 26
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TABLE OF AUTHORITIES
CASES
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iii
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FEDERAL STATUTES
FEDERAL RULES
LEGISLATIVE MATERIALS
OTHER AUTHORITIES
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for a New Trial, Remittitur, and to Alter or Amend the Judgment (“Motion,” Doc.
Two separate juries have now found Defendant liable for willfully infringing
wrongdoing. Yet Defendant now moves to set aside or limit the latest jury’s award even
though there is no dispute that the Court correctly instructed the jury regarding the
appropriate range of statutory damages and the jury followed that instruction.
In making this motion, Defendant pays little regard or attention to the substantial
deference that must be given to Congress in legislating the appropriate range of statutory
damages and to juries in awarding those damages. Instead, Defendant asks this Court to
do what no Court has ever done – find that a verdict that falls within the statutory range
set forth in Section 504 of the Copyright Act nevertheless fails to comply with due
Defendant reasserts in cursory fashion her arguments, previously rejected by this Court,
certified copies of sound recordings deposited with the Copyright Office at trial. (Def.
First, Defendant’s constitutional arguments lack any merit and should not even be
reached if the Court concludes that a remittitur is legally permissible for an award of
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statutory damages (a proposition that Plaintiffs dispute), because that remedy effectively
to preserve the constitutional arguments pressed here and, in any event, those arguments
all lack factual and legal support. Given all the evidence presented at trial, most of which
Defendant ignores, there is no basis for concluding that the jury’s selection of a damage
figure within the range authorized by Congress for willful copyright infringement
violated the Due Process Clause. The due process concerns analyzed in punitive damage
have found no case where a court has ever struck down a statutory damages award on this
basis.
Second, there is no basis for a remittitur. Even if a court has the power to remit an
award authorized by Congress (which Plaintiffs dispute), the facts of this case – 24 acts
copying by any of the millions of users of the KaZaA network, clear evidence of
amply justify a very substantial award. That said, if the Court nonetheless determines
that some reduction is both legally permissible and factually warranted, in order to
achieve finality in this case, Plaintiffs would consider a remittitur rather than
participating in a third trial. But they will do so only if the damages fully take into
account the evidence in the case. In addition, the three jury verdicts that have been
reached in individual file-sharing cases – the two verdicts from this case and the recent
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Tenenbaum verdict in Massachusetts – should inform that decision as they reflect what a
Finally, Defendant puts forth no new evidence to support her arguments regarding
copies of sound recordings from the Copyright Office. The Court rejected these
arguments when first raised by Defendant, and should not reconsider them now.
STATEMENT OF FACTS
On June 18, 2009, the jury returned its verdict, finding that Defendant had
willfully infringed all 24 of Plaintiffs’ sound recordings at issue and awarding Plaintiffs
statutory damages in the amount of $80,000 for each act of willful infringement. (Doc.
No. 336.) On June 19, 2009, the Court entered judgment on the jury’s verdict.
(“Judgment,” Doc. No. 338.)1 On July 6, 2009, Defendant filed her Motion seeking to
(1) strike the statutory damages portion of the Judgment; (2) remit the statutory damages
award to the statutory minimum; or (3) set aside the verdict and order a new trial on all
Defendant’s willful and unrepentant infringing conduct that provided the basis for the
jury’s verdict. In addition to the 24 works in suit, Plaintiffs proved that Defendant had
approximately 1,700 digital audio files – many of them Plaintiffs’ copyrighted sound
1
Although Plaintiffs, as prevailing parties under Section 505 of the Copyright
Act, are also entitled to recover their attorney fees from Defendant, they have not sought
fees in this case.
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recordings – in her KaZaA shared folder on her computer at the time MediaSentry
detected her infringement. Plaintiffs’ evidence demonstrated that Defendant had copied
these sound recordings from other KaZaA users and that Defendant distributed these
copyrighted recordings on KaZaA until she learned that Plaintiffs had detected her
infringement. Defendant testified that she had studied the Napster case in college and
knew that copying and sharing copyrighted music files over the Internet was illegal.
Plaintiffs also demonstrated that Defendant refused to accept responsibility for her
counsel, and her own expert with a brand new computer hard drive that she knew would
have no evidence of her infringement rather than the actual drive that she used to
infringe. She also pointed to a parade of completely implausible possible culprits who
might have used both her computer and her “tereastarr” user name to commit the various
While Plaintiffs, under the Copyright Act, did not need to prove actual damages, there
can hardly be any dispute that there is substantial damage caused by the rampant piracy
somehow does not impact the legitimate market for music. In fact, Plaintiffs’ witnesses,
including Wade Leak and JoAn Cho, testified to the substantial harm caused by the
such as KaZaA, including lost revenues, layoffs, and a diminished capability to identify
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and promote new talent. As Mr. Leak testified, such conduct, as practiced by Defendant
and numerous others, has seriously hurt Plaintiffs’ digital market for the songs at issue.
Legitimate markets simply cannot compete with free. Defendant’s actions amounted to
copyrighted sound recordings, and the cost of such a license on the open market would
involve “buying the company.” See Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Reimerdes, 111 F.
Supp. 2d 294, 331-32 (S.D.N.Y. 2000) (describing harm from infringement over the
Internet as “exponential rather than linear”), aff’d, 273 F.3d 429 (2d Cir. 2001). The jury
obviously found the testimony about the impact of Defendant’s willful infringement and
ARGUMENT
applied in her case, offends the Due Process Clause and is not law.” (Def. Mot. at 3.) As
noted above, if the Court determines that remittitur is appropriate, it will effectively have
mooted any constitutional concerns. Moreover, Defendant has waived the issue by
failing time and again to raise any constitutional challenge to an award of statutory
damages within the range set by Congress. If the Court nevertheless reaches the
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In seeking a new trial under Rule 59, a party must show that she made an
appropriate objection, stating the grounds for the objection with particularity, before the
commencement of jury deliberations. See Hagerman v. Yukon Energy Corp., 839 F.2d
407, 413-14 (8th Cir. 1988); Bateman v. Mnemonics, Inc., 79 F.3d 1532, 1543-44 (11th
Cir. 1996).2 In addition, a party may not complain that she has been denied a fair trial
after inviting the very error about which she complains. See United States v. Samples,
456 F.3d 875, 884 (8th Cir. 2006); United States v. Beason, 220 F.3d 964, 968 (8th Cir.
2000); King v. Brewer, 577 F.2d 435, 441-43 (8th Cir. 1978).
Here, Plaintiffs made it abundantly clear that they intended to seek statutory
damages in this case. They raised the issue in their Complaint, in their Rule 26(a)(1)
disclosures, in their discovery responses, in their statement of the case, and in their
proposed jury instructions and verdict form. The Court, in turn, proposed to instruct the
jury that it could award statutory damages for each infringement proved at trial anywhere
within the range established by Congress. Not only did Defendant not object to these
instructions, she had herself submitted proposed jury instructions expressly asking that
2
See also Fed. R. Civ. P. 51(d) (“A party may assign as error: (A) an error in an
instruction actually given, if that party properly objected; or (B) a failure to give an
instruction, if that party properly requested it and—unless the court rejected the request in
a definitive ruling on the record—also properly objected.”); Smith v. Updegraff, 744 F.2d
1354, 1367 (8th Cir. 1984) (“We believe Rule 51 was intended to encompass jury verdict
forms and find no compelling reason to decide otherwise.”).
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the jury be instructed on the full range of statutory damages available to Plaintiffs under
Having invited the Court to instruct the jury that it could award statutory damages
within the range specified by the Copyright Act, and having failed to object to the Court’s
instruction to that effect, Defendant cannot now be heard to argue that the jury’s award
Defendant’s constitutional attack on the damage award is, in any event, baseless.
In challenging the jury’s award, Defendant relies on facts not in evidence. Furthermore,
the award falls well within the statutory range for willful infringement that Congress
authorized in 17 U.S.C. § 504(c). It follows that the Court must analyze the
constitutionality of the award under the highly deferential standard articulated in St.
Louis, I.M. & S. Ry. Co. v. Williams, 251 U.S. 63 (1919). See Zomba Enters., Inc. v.
Panorama Records, 491 F.3d 584, 587 (6th Cir. 2007), cert. denied, 128 S. Ct. 2429
(2008); Lowry’s Reports, Inc. v. Legg Mason, Inc., 302 F. Supp. 2d 455, 460 (D. Md.
2004); Accounting Outsourcing, LLC v. Verizon Wireless Pers. Commc’ns, L.P., 329 F.
Supp. 2d 789, 808-09 (M.D. La. 2004); Holtzman v. Caplice, No. 07 C 7279, 2008 WL
3
In post-trial briefing following the first jury trial in this case, Defendant raised a
due process challenge to the jury’s award of statutory damages. The Court did not rule
on that argument when it ordered a new trial. At no point other than her two post-trial
briefs, however, has Defendant challenged the constitutionality of statutory damages for
copyright infringement. Because the Court expressly ruled that the second trial was a
new trial as to all issues (Doc. No. 197 at 40.), Defendant’s failure to raise a due process
challenge during the second trial means that Defendant has waived it.
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2168762, at *6-7 (N.D. Ill. May 23, 2008). Defendant’s reliance on the Supreme Court’s
N. Am., Inc. v. Gore, 517 U.S. 559 (1996) – is entirely misplaced, both legally and
factually.
factual argument entirely without support in the record. According to her, the actual
harm caused by her infringement should be calculated as either $1.29 per song or $15 per
album. (Def. Mot. at 2.) Her entire argument flows from this erroneous and unsupported
assertion that the only thing that she did was download a few songs. Defendant would
have this Court believe that she simply stole 24 songs, roughly the equivalent of two
albums. In fact, there were 1,700 songs in her directory which she shared with the
millions of users of the KaZaA network. The record is clear that the Defendant did
rather than actual damages. Plaintiffs were therefore not required to present proof of
actual damages resulting from Defendant’s infringement, although the harm to Plaintiffs
was amply demonstrated. Lowry’s Reports, 302 F. Supp. 2d at 459 (explaining that
“[b]ecause statutory damages are an alternative to actual damages, there has never been a
requirement that statutory damages must be strictly related to actual injury”). At trial,
Defendant might have attempted to elicit testimony that Plaintiffs’ actual damages were
merely $1.29 or $15 per track, in an effort to have the jury limit the statutory damages
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they awarded based on the fact that the actual damages were low. But Defendant
apparently had no evidence of this and did not present it to the jury. In fact, Defendant
On the other hand, the testimony from witnesses for the Plaintiffs strongly
supported the theory that the harm was substantially more than simply the amount it
would cost to legally download a song or album. The evidence showed that Defendant
than 1,700 digital audio files in her KaZaA shared folder on her personal computer that
she distributed for copying by any other user of the KaZaA network. These song files
were in Defendant’s shared folder for a long period of time, and Defendant left her
computer on and connected to the Internet “all the time.” By placing and storing these
files in her KaZaA shared folder, Defendant was distributing Plaintiffs’ copyrighted
works in an unlimited, unprotected, and viral method because any of the millions of other
users on the KaZaA network, all of whom were looking to download for free, could
easily access these files, download them, and subsequently allow untold numbers of other
The evidence permitted the jury to conclude that Defendant disseminated actual
copies of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works to other users on the network many times.
Witnesses for the Plaintiffs, such as Wade Leak, testified that the cost of obtaining a
license that would allow someone to engage in Defendant’s actions would be unheard of
and prohibitive.
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Defendant also ignores completely the other relevant evidence that Plaintiffs
presented to the jury and that the jury was properly instructed to consider in an
assessment of damages. (Doc. 335 at 23 (instructing the jury that it could consider “the
disregard of the copyright, the effect of the defendant’s prior or concurrent copyright
infringement activity, and whether profit or gain was established”).) For instance, the
jury heard that Defendant destroyed evidence, in the form of her original computer hard
drive. Plaintiffs also presented evidence of perjury and demonstrated a compelling need
her valuation and damages theory to the harm caused by reproducing 24 songs. In fact,
the jury was entitled to and properly did consider the substantial harm that she caused
through both reproduction and distribution of the infringed works and thousands of
others, as well as the need for deterrence and her litigation misconduct.
award should be reviewed much like a punitive damage award. But that premise is
simply wrong. Statutory damages are not the functional equivalent of punitive damages.
They serve a broader range of purposes, including providing compensation and achieving
damages must be awarded within a defined range established, and periodically adjusted,
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by Congress. A statutory range that is enacted before the wrongful conduct is engaged in
gives ample notice and does not present any of the same due process issues as punitive
damages, which are unlimited and unconstrained. That means that any constitutional
challenge is governed by a standard much more deferential than that applicable to a jury’s
punitive damage award. In particular, there is no constitutional requirement that the level
of a statutory damage award bear some close relation to the actual harm caused by an
intentional tort.
American copyright law has authorized awards of statutory damages since the
Copyright Act of 1790, and English copyright law did the same long before that. See
Feltner v. Columbia Pictures Television, Inc., 523 U.S. 340, 349 (1998) (tracing the
history of statutory copyright damages back to the first English copyright statute that set
damages for infringement at “one Penny for every Sheet which shall be found in [the
Anne ch. 19 (1710) (alteration in original)). One reason for allowing statutory damages
is that it is difficult to prove actual damages caused by copyright infringement. See F.W.
Woolworth Co. v. Contemporary Arts, Inc., 344 U.S. 228, 231 (1952) (statutory damages
“give the owner of a copyright some recompense for injury done him, in a case where the
(quotation marks omitted)); Staff of House Comm. on the Judiciary, 87th Cong., Report
of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law 102-03
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Bender, Rev. Ed.) (explaining why actual damages are inadequate in many cases).
Because of the difficulty of proving actual harm, the Copyright Act gives
copyright owners the explicit right to “elect, at any time before final judgment is
damages for all infringements involved in the action.” 17 U.S.C. § 504(c)(1) (emphasis
added). Allowing a copyright owner to choose statutory damages does not mean that
there has not been actual harm, it simply means that Congress properly recognized the
difficulty of proving that harm. As the Supreme Court has recognized, providing a
choice between actual damages and statutory damages “shows that something other than
to victims of copyright infringement, while also serving to deter future infringements and
4
See Brady v. Daly, 175 U.S. 148, 154 (1899) (primary purpose is
compensatory); F.W. Woolworth, 344 U.S. at 233 (“The statutory rule, formulated after
long experience, not merely compels restitution of profit and reparation for injury but
also is designed to discourage wrongful conduct.”); see also, Report of Register of
Copyrights 103 (“In sum, statutory damages are intended (1) to assure adequate
compensation to the copyright owner for his injury, and (2) to deter infringement.”); H.R.
Rep. No. 106-216, at 6 (1999) (acknowledging that “juries must be able to render awards
that deter others from infringing intellectual property rights” and that “[i]t is important
that the costs of infringement substantially exceed the costs of compliance, so that
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punitive damages.
Even more important is the fact that statutory damages must be set within a range
that Congress has established. The Copyright Act has long provided an explicit range of
possible statutory damage awards for copyright infringement, with a different maximum
award permitted in the context of willful infringement. 17 U.S.C § 504(c). Congress has
on a number of occasions, the most recent adjustment taking place in 1999 in response
to increased copyright infringement via the Internet. H.R. Rep. No. 106-216 (1999).
This feature of statutory damages is critical because the central concern animating
the Supreme Court’s Gore line of cases setting constitutional limits on punitive damages
is a lack of fair notice. As the Gore Court put it, “[e]lementary notions of fairness
enshrined in our constitutional jurisprudence dictate that a person receive fair notice not
only of the conduct that will subject him to punishment, but also of the severity of the
penalty that a State may impose.” 517 U.S. at 574. Here, where Congress has
constitutional concerns fall away. See Lowry’s Reports, 302 F. Supp. 2d at 460 (refusing
to review statutory damages for copyright infringement under the Gore punitive damages
analysis because “[t]he unregulated and arbitrary use of judicial power that the Gore
persons who use or distribute intellectual property have a strong incentive to abide by the
copyright laws”).
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Gore to statutory damage award and noting that, in the context of such congressionally
mandated schemes, “Defendants can hardly complain that they had no fair notice
regarding the severity of the potential punishment”); Zomba Enters., 491 F.3d at 588
(holding that the Supreme Court’s punitive damages analysis does not apply to an award
of statutory damages).
damages case law for a second reason. The Court’s Gore line of cases emphasized that
sanctions for the conduct at issue,” 517 U.S. at 583 (quoting Browning-Ferris Indus. of
Vt., Inc. v. Kelco Disposal, Inc., 492 U.S. 257, 301 (1989) (O’Connor, J. concurring in
part and dissenting in part)). This recognition of the heightened deference given to
statutory damage awards, and the correspondingly lower deference owed a jury’s
unbounded punitive damage award, is included within the third guidepost established by
the Gore Court, which judges the propriety of punitive damages by examining the
disparity between a punitive damage award and the “civil penalties authorized or imposed
in comparable cases.” 517 U.S. at 575 (emphasis added). The damages awarded here
fall within a clearly defined statutory range – they are by definition the “civil penalties
authorized range of civil penalties would be an odd exercise because they are the same
thing. This alone demonstrates the inapplicability of the Gore punitive damages
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awards apply the much more deferential standard for statutory civil penalties established
in St. Louis, I.M. & S. Railway Co. v. Williams, 251 U.S. 63 (1919). This standard
intentional tort like willful copyright infringement. As noted in Williams, “the states . . .
possess a wide latitude of discretion in the matter” and statutory remedies for “public
wrongs” are not required to be “be confined or proportioned to [the plaintiff’s] loss or
damages.” Id. at 66. Under this standard, it is not sufficient for a defendant to claim that
there is a large differential between their estimate of the actual harm caused and the
magnitude of the penalty. The Williams standard recognizes that legislators have the
constitutional authority to make that choice, and a court should be loathe to disturb it.
Courts reviewing awards of statutory damages under the Copyright Act have
recognized this duty of extreme deference. As the Sixth Circuit explained, constitutional
review in this context “is extraordinarily deferential – even more so than in cases
F.3d at 587 (affirming statutory damage award in a ratio of 44:1 compared to the
licensing fee the plaintiff lost as a result of the infringement); see Superior Form
Builders, Inc. v. Dan Chase Taxidermy Supply Co., 74 F.3d 488, 496 (4th Cir. 1996)
(applying a standard of review that “is even more deferential than abuse of discretion”
and upholding a jury award of $400,000 for four infringements, even though the plaintiff
proved no actual damage and the defendant’s gross revenue was $10,200); see also
Douglas v. Cunningham, 294 U.S. 207, 210 (1935) (analyzing the range of statutory
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damages in the 1909 Act and explaining that “the employment of the statutory yardstick,
within set limits, is committed solely to the court which hears the case, and this fact takes
the matter out of the ordinary rule with respect to abuse of discretion”); Columbia
Pictures Television, Inc. v. Krypton Broad. of Birmingham, Inc., 259 F.3d 1186, 1194
(9th Cir. 2001) (“If statutory damages are elected, [t]he court has wide discretion in
specified maxima and minima.” (internal quotation marks omitted) (citation omitted)
(alteration in original)).5
Courts have accorded the same level of deference in cases addressing other
statutory damage provisions. For example, the federal Telephone Consumer Protection
Act (“TCPA”) provides that any person who receives an unsolicited advertisement sent
by fax is entitled to receive “actual monetary loss from such a violation, or . . . $500 in
Courts that have addressed this provision have applied Williams and noted that “Congress
identified two public harms addressed by the TCPA: (1) unsolicited fax advertisements
machines typically can only handle one fax at a time; and (2) unsolicited commercial
5
Although earlier cases left unsettled whether it was the judge or the jury who
decided whether to award statutory damages and in what amount, in recent years, the role
of the jury in determining statutory damages for copyright has been clearly settled. The
Supreme Court, in Feltner, 523 U.S. at 355, held that the Seventh Amendment “provides
a right to a jury trial on all issues pertinent to an award of statutory damages under
§ 504(c) of the Copyright Act, including the amount itself.” Defendant’s motion is flatly
inconsistent with this right.
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Outsourcing, 329 F. Supp. 2d at 809; see also Texas v. Am. Blastfax, Inc., 121 F. Supp.
2d 1085, 1090 (W.D. Tex. 2000) (explaining that “the TCPA damages provision was not
advertisements, but also to address and deter the overall public harm caused by such
conduct”).
TCPA defendants often assert that the actual damages suffered by the recipient of
unsolicited fax advertisements are incredibly low, as little as “a few pennies per alleged
violation,” making the statutory damages of $500 per fax disproportionately high. See,
e.g., Kenro, Inc. v. Fax Daily, Inc., 962 F. Supp. 1162, 1165-66 (S.D. Ind. 1997). But
courts have found no constitutional violation under Williams, recognizing that Congress
designed the TCPA remedy to “take into account the difficult to quantify business
deter the unscrupulous practice of shifting these costs to unwitting recipients of junk
faxes, and provide adequate incentive for an individual plaintiff to bring suit on his own
behalf.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted); see Holtzman, 2008 WL 2168762, at *6.
In fact, Plaintiffs have not located a single case, in the nine decades since
award of statutory damages because of a due process violation. See, e.g., Colleen P.
Murphy, Judicial Assessment of Legal Remedies, 94 Nw. U. L. Rev. 153, 202 (1999)
(noting that in the context of the Copyright Act, “[n]o reported decision has reduced a
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Under the applicable standards, there is no doubt that the jury’s award passes
copyrighted works, and that the infringement was willful. Defendant argues that these
24 intentional torts were trivial in their economic impact. (Def. Mot. at 2.) But that
argument – even if correct (which it is not) – misses the mark as a matter of law for the
reasons already discussed. The Constitution does not require some fixed ratio between
actual injury caused by an intentional tort and the damages a legislature may choose to
impose. To the contrary, legislators may freely determine that a given tort merits a
damage award vastly exceeding the actual injury inflicted. See Lowry’s Reports, 302 F.
Supp. 2d at 459; Douglas, 294 U.S. at 210. In so doing, they can assess what level of
damage award is needed to deter violations, taking into account the difficulty of detecting
violations and the cost of enforcement litigation. See H.R. Rep. No. 106-216, at 2
(explaining that the 1999 increase in the statutory damages range was necessary to
the laws”).
Thus, whether or not an infringer acts with the express purpose of profiting from
his or her infringement, statutory damages are available within the range set by Congress.
As the Supreme Court recognized in Woolworth, “[e]ven for uninjurious and unprofitable
invasions of copyright the court may, if it deems it just, impose a liability within statutory
limits to sanction and vindicate the statutory policy.” 344 U.S. at 233.
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Defendant did not limit her tortious conduct to 24 reproductions made for her personal
use. To the contrary, she participated in a massive way in the KaZaA file-sharing
network, she attempted to hide her conduct by replacing her hard drive, and she offered
multiple conflicting and implausible denials of her misconduct under oath. In light of all
of this evidence, Defendant’s due process concerns are meritless, particularly when
measured against the “due regard for the interests of the public, the numberless
opportunities for committing the offense, and the need for securing uniform adherence
In fact, when Congress amended the Copyright Act in 1999 to increase the
minimum and maximum permissible amounts of statutory damages, it cited behavior just
damages to deal with the fact that “[m]any computer users are either ignorant that
copyright laws apply to Internet activity, or they simply believe that they will not be
caught or prosecuted for their conduct.” H.R. Rep. No. 106-216 at 3. The case at bar is
almost directly on point with what Congress sought to address in the latter situation – a
defendant who knew that she was infringing but believed that she would not be caught or
prosecuted for her conduct because she committed her acts via an Internet connection.
Defendant relies on Philip Morris USA v. Williams, 549 U.S. 346 (2007), for the
proposition that the damage award must be justified solely by reference to “punishing and
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deterring a defendant for her conduct and the injury that caused to the plaintiffs.” (Def.
Mot. at 7 (emphasis in original).) But setting aside the fact that Philip Morris does not
apply because it did not concern an award of statutory damages, Defendant misreads the
case. The Court did state that a jury cannot be told to punish a defendant directly for
tortious conduct affecting third parties not before the court. But it went on to say that, in
calculating the appropriate punitive damage award, a jury must weigh the reprehensibility
of the defendant’s conduct, and that assessment can constitutionally take account of the
actual and potential harm inflicted by the defendant on third parties. Philip Morris, 549
U.S. at 355. Plaintiffs testified about harm primarily to themselves but also to artists who
directly share in the royalties from the sale of sound recordings. They are directly
“downstream” from the Plaintiffs and cannot prosecute their own rights as they do not
own the copyrights at issue. It is certainly permissible for the jury to consider the impact
Defendant also relies on cases suggesting that statutory damage awards may be
constitutionally excessive when thousands of claims are aggregated in a class action. But
those cases have no relevance here, where Plaintiffs did not bring a class action and did
not seek to aggregate every claim of copyright infringement on which they had right to
sue and seek statutory damages. See, e.g., Parker v. Time Warner Entm’t Co., L.P., 331
F.3d 13, 22 (2d Cir. 2003) (explaining that the problems that arise at the intersection
between class actions and statutory damages are a result of combining one mechanism –
statutory damages – that encourages the filing of individual lawsuits with a second
mechanism – class actions – that “aggregates many claims – often because there would
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Nothing forced the jury to pick the dollar figure it selected. To the contrary, the jury had
the authority to award damages reflective of Defendant’s misconduct and it did so.
should not be minimized. Her conduct underscores the compelling need for the deterrent
effect Congress incorporated into the Copyright Act’s statutory damages scheme. To
conclude otherwise would subvert long-settled, and still entirely relevant, understandings
Finally, even if the Court were to conclude that the damages award is
constitutionally excessive, the remedy would not be, as Defendant argues, to reduce the
award to zero. (Def. Mot. at 3-4). Rather, the proper approach would be to reduce the
award to the maximum amount that the court determines would be constitutional. See
Ross v. Kansas City Power & Light Co., 293 F.3d 1041, 1049-50 (8th Cir. 2002).
Plaintiffs submit that the Court also should deny Defendant’s request for a
remittitur. Even if the Court has the power to remit an award of statutory damages
(which Plaintiffs dispute), for much the same reasons discussed above, Plaintiffs submit
that the damage award is not “grossly excessive” and therefore is not properly subject to
a remittitur. See Eich v. Bd. of Regents, 350 F.3d 752, 763-64 (8th Cir. 2003).
The Supreme Court -- fully aware of the range of statutory damages -- has made it
clear that the jury has the sole authority to determine “all issues pertinent to an award of
21
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statutory damages,” including the amount itself. Feltner, 523 U.S. at 355. Feltner does
not hold nor contemplate that a judge has the right to alter a jury’s statutory damage
award if that award falls squarely within the statutory damage range prescribed by
Congress. See also SESAC, Inc. v. WPNT, Inc., 327 F. Supp. 2d 531, 532 (W.D. Pa.
2003) (rejecting request for remittitur of statutory damages for copyright infringement
because “[t]he court should not interfere lightly with a carefully crafted statutory scheme
In any event, as discussed above, the jury’s damage award is proper and in no way
excessive. Indeed, as previously noted, the evidence in the record supports the verdict,
the court properly instructed the jury, and the jury awarded an amount well within the
Yet Plaintiffs also recognize the substantial practical interest in ending this long-
running litigation, and especially in avoiding a third trial of this case. This case has
already placed a heavy burden upon the resources of this Court over the course of two
jury trials. Plaintiffs, of course, have also expended considerable sums to litigate the
case. They also recognize that the award is likely beyond the ability of Defendant to pay.
With these realities in mind, and without waiving their right to reject any remittitur and
elect a new trial, Plaintiffs might accept a remittitur under certain circumstances.
First, any remittitur must take into account Defendant’s willful conduct and her
including the 24 sound recordings at issue, as well as the substantial damage caused to
Plaintiffs and their businesses by Defendant’s actions. In this regard, the Court cannot
22
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order a remittitur for “an amount less than the jury could reasonably find.” Taylor v.
Otter Tail Corp., 484 F.3d 1016, 1019 (8th Cir. 2007) (citation omitted). And in
determining the amount of any potential remittitur, the Court should look to other jury
verdicts in similar cases. See McCabe v. Mais, 580 F. Supp. 2d 815, 837 (N.D. Iowa
2008); Vogler v. Blackmore, 352 F.3d 150, 156 (5th Cir. 2003). The Court should
therefore consider the damages awarded by the jury in the first trial of Thomas – $9,250
for each of 24 infringed works – and the recently concluded trial of Joel Tenenbaum in
the District of Massachusetts – $22,500 for each of 30 infringed works. The Tenenbaum
featured facts that are virtually identical to Defendant’s infringement. Sony BMG Music
Entm’t v. Tenenbaum, Case No. 07-cv-11446-NG (Jury Verdict Form attached hereto as
Exhibit A). Along with the jury award in this case, these two awards provide insight into
what a reasonable jury would find appropriate damages for willful copyright
experiences and backgrounds. The jurors spent a cumulative total of 11 trial days
listening to the evidence and argument presented by each side of these file-sharing cases.
Although the Eighth Circuit has noted that “[e]ach case must be evaluated on its own
merits,” McCabe, 580 F. Supp. 2d at 835 n.14 (quoting Herold v. Burlington N., Inc., 761
F.2d 1241, 1248 (8th Cir. 1985)), these statutory damage awards appropriately reflect the
broader harm caused by file-sharing, as explained at trial by Wade Leak. Moreover, they
23
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are the only damage awards in file-sharing cases to date – cases that shared almost
identical facts in evidence and which were decided in short succession. Thus, they
should inform any decision to reduce the award as they reflect what a “jury could
reasonably find.” See Taylor, 484 F.3d at 1019; see also McCabe, 580 F. Supp. 2d at 835
n.14 (“[T]he value of any comparison will depend upon the similarities of the injuries, the
locations and dates of the trials, and of the evidence presented there.” (quoting Gutierrez-
Rodriguez v. Cartagena, 882 F.2d 553, 579 (1st Cir. 1989)); Shaw v. United States, 741
F.2d 1202, 1209 (9th Cir. 1984) (although “[e]ach case stands on its own facts[,] . . .
courts are required to maintain some degree of uniformity in cases involving similar
losses”); Levka v. City of Chicago, 748 F.2d 421, 425 (7th Cir. 1984) (explaining that a
court may consider with a damage award “is out of line compared to other awards in
similar cases”).
both sides and the Court to achieve finality and close the case, but premised on the
continued belief that both juries impaneled at the trials in this case rendered valid verdicts
against Defendant. They would not do so if the Court were to hold that the current
effort to give this Court a final opportunity to reconsider” its rulings on two legal issues:
(1) the Court’s Memorandum of Law & Order dated June 11, 2009 (Doc. No. 315)
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denying Defendant’s Motion to Suppress Evidence (Doc. No. 263); and (2) the Court’s
Order dated June 16, 2009 (Doc. No. 329) denying Defendant’s Memorandum in Support
Testimony to Prove Contents of Copyrighted Works (Doc. No. 322) (Def. Mot. at 2).
Response to Motion to Suppress Evidence (Doc. No. 296) and set forth at oral argument
on June 10, 2009, the Court’s decision to deny Defendant’s motion to suppress was
correct and should stand. Defendant argues that the Court should reconsider its order
based on allegations that MediaSentry violated the private detectives acts in New Jersey
or Maryland (Def. Mot. at 11). However, Defendant has already raised and the Court has
already rejected these arguments, which were belatedly presented for the first time in
(Doc. No. 308 at 8-9). In fact, the Court held that “MediaSentry has not violated any of
the asserted state or federal laws.” (Doc. No. 315 at 2, emphasis provided.) Further,
Plaintiffs note that the District of Massachusetts recently rejected a virtually identical
Tenenbaum, Case No. 07-cv-11446-NG, slip op. (D. Mass. July 22, 2009) (attached
hereto as Exhibit B). In the Tenenbaum case, the court similarly found that counsel’s
arguments had no merit and denied a virtually identical request to suppress evidence
25
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show MediaSentry violated any law in gathering evidence to be used in the case.)
Accordingly, this Court’s decision to deny Defendant’s motion to suppress was correct
non-certified copies of the sound recordings at issue. For the reasons stated in Plaintiffs’
Deposited with the Copyright Office (Doc. No. 326) and set forth at oral argument before
the Court on June 16, 2009, Plaintiffs respectfully submit the Court correctly decided this
CONCLUSION
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EXHIBIT A
Case
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911 353-1
FiledFiled
07/31/2009
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911 353-1
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07/31/2009
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911 353-1
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07/31/2009
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07/31/2009
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EXHIBIT B
Case 0:06-cv-01497-MJD-RLE Document 353-2 Filed 08/14/09 Page 2 of 6
This is an automatic e-mail message generated by the CM/ECF system. Please DO NOT
RESPOND to this e-mail because the mail box is unattended.
***NOTE TO PUBLIC ACCESS USERS*** Judicial Conference of the United States
policy permits attorneys of record and parties in a case (including pro se litigants) to
receive one free electronic copy of all documents filed electronically, if receipt is required
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District of Massachusetts
The following transaction was entered on 7/22/2009 at 7:21 AM EDT and filed on 7/22/2009
Case Name: Capital Records, Inc. et al v. Alaujan
Case Number: 1:03-cv-11661
Filer:
Document Number: No document attached
Docket Text:
Judge Nancy Gertner: Electronic ORDER entered denying [853] Motion to
Suppress. "The Defendant raises a number of arguments why MediaSentry's
monitoring was illegal under state and federal wiretap laws, as well as state
licensing requirements for private investigators. See Mass. Gen. L. ch. 272, s.
99(A); Mass. Gen. L. ch. 147, s. 22. Given that MediaSentry did not conduct its
monitoring from Massachusetts, does not maintain a presence in the state, and
the computer on which MediaSentry detected Tenenbaum's file-sharing was
located in Rhode Island at the time, Massachusetts' wiretapping and licensing
provisions would not seem to reach the conduct at issue at all. See Connelly Aff.
(document # 866-5); Cox Comm. Subpoena Resp. (document # 866-9). Regardless
of which state's licensing requirements are invoked, the Court previously
considered a similar motion to strike in London-Sire Records, Inc. v. Arista
Records LLC, Case No. 04-12434, holding that "[n]either the rules of evidence nor
the Fourth Amendment bar the use of evidence arguably unlawfully obtained by
private parties in their private suits." Jan. 9, 2009 Mem. and Order at 3-4
(document # 230). Tenenbaum's remedy for a search he believes illegal under
state laws is not exclusion of this evidence, but a separate action against
MediaSentry or its employer under the state statutes he identifies. That leaves
only the federal wiretapping provisions. See Electronic Communications Wiretap
Case 0:06-cv-01497-MJD-RLE Document 353-2 Filed 08/14/09 Page 3 of 6
Act, 18 U.S.C. 2510 et seq. Here, Tenenbaum proposes a difficult analogy when he
compares MediaSentry's activities to illegal eavesdropping. The Defendant made
his computer's "shared folder" visible to the world of KazaA users, for the very
purpose of allowing others to view and download its contents -- an invitation that
MediaSentry accepted just as any other KazaA user could have. The electronic
communications that ensued were conducted with the consent of both parties. As
a result, it is bizarre indeed to describe MediaSentry's decision to examine and
record its counterpart's IP address as eavesdropping, as though federal law
prohibited MediaSentry from determining where the data sent to it from
Tenenbaum's computer originated. It is as if one received a letter in the mail, but
was not allowed to look at the return address.This principle makes no more sense
on the internet than in the non-digital world, and it is not encompassed by the
Act. The type of IP information transmitted by KazaA and recorded by
MediaSentry is accessible to almost anyone with a computer. Even if viewed as
an "interception" -- a characterization that the Court accepts here only as a
hypothetical -- MediaSentry's monitoring activities fall within the statute's safe
harbor for interceptions by a party to the communication. See 18 U.S.C. 2511(1),
2511(2)(d); see also R.I. Stat. s. 12-5.1-1 et seq. (one-party consent rule parallel to
the federal statute). Tenenbaum transmitted the digital files at issue to
MediaSentry, making it a party to the communication, and he has not shown here
that any interception occurred with the purpose of committing a "criminal or
tortious act" under state or federal law. Id.; see also Order on Motions in Limine,
Capitol Records Inc. v. Thomas-Rasset, Case No. 06-1497 (D. Minn. June 11,
2009). The Motion to Suppress MediaSentry Evidence [853] is DENIED." (Gaudet,
Jennifer)
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3
Case 0:06-cv-01497-MJD-RLE Document 353-2 Filed 08/14/09 Page 5 of 6
Charles M. MacLean
869 Concord Street
Framingham, MA 01701
Charmaine M. Blanchard
Law Offices of John J. McGlynn, Jr.
4 Norman Street
Salem, MA 01970
Diane Briggs
7 Ponkapoag Way
Canton, MA 02021
Diane Cabell
1587 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
Douglas T. Evans
58 Main Street
Topsfield, MA 01983
George W. Gray , Jr
Law Office of George W. Gray Jr.
110 Haverhill St.
Suite 315
Amesbury, MA 01913
John Palfrey
1587 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
John J. McGlynn , Jr
Law Office of John J. McGlynn, Jr.
4 Norman Street
Salem, MA 01970
Katheryn J. Coggon
Holme Roberts & Owen LLP
Suite 4100
1700 Lincoln Street
Denver, CO 80203-4541
Matthew Oppenheim
The Oppenheim Group
7304 River Falls Drive
4
Case 0:06-cv-01497-MJD-RLE Document 353-2 Filed 08/14/09 Page 6 of 6
Potomac, MD 20854
Michael Fitzgerald
11 Pineridge Road
Wilmington, MA 01887
Michael Manzi
Law Office of Michael Manzi
59 Jackson Street
Lawrence, MA 01840
Paul A. Shneyer
Shneyer & Associates Ltd.
1991 Broadway OFC 2
New York, NY 10023-5828
Steven Karol
Karol & Karol
424 Adams Street
Milton, Ma 02186
Yevgeniya Shnayder
31 Star Road
Newton, MA 02465
5
Case 0:06-cv-01497-MJD-RLE Document 353-3 Filed 08/14/09 Page 1 of 1
)
CAPITOL RECORDS, INC., )
a Delaware corporation, et al., ) Case No. 06-1497 (MJD/RLE)
)
Plaintiffs, ) LR 7.1 WORD COUNT COMPLIANCE
) CERTIFICATE REGARDING
v. ) PLAINTIFFS’ RESPONSE IN
) OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT’S
JAMMIE THOMAS, ) MOTION FOR A NEW TRIAL,
REMITTITUR, AND TO ALTER OR
)
AMEND THE JUDGMENT
Defendant. )
)
I further certify that, in preparation of this memorandum, I used Microsoft Word 2002,
(10.6612.6626) SP3, and that this word processing program has been applied specifically to
include all text, including headings, footnotes, and quotations in the following word count.