Copyright Liability and Music ‘Piracy’: Capitol Records v Thomas-Rasset

Abstract

Illegal downloading of copyright materials by end-users had its heyday in the early 2000s, with music, television, and film studios desperately searching for a way to curb the tide of sharing. This chapter uses the example of Capitol Records v Jammie Thomas-Rasset, the first file-sharing case to be tried before a civil jury in the United States, to demonstrate the disproportionate penalties associated with P2P file-sharing. The matter concerned an individual’s sharing of 24 songs, and the damages varied between $222.000 and $1.92 million. Building on this copyright infringement case, the chapter ponders the appropriateness of copyright infringement damages in a world where many infringers see no profit from their copyright breaches. To reach this goal, the chapter discusses the content of the Thomas-Rasset case and the externalities of this judgement as well as copyright enforcement against P2P file-sharers in the US.