The file-sharing retrial of Jammie Thomas-Rasset began at 9am Monday morning on the 15th floor of the gleaming Minnesota District Court. The first rows in the gallery were reserved for the press "and bloggers"—this is a court aware of the public interest in this case, as evidenced by a comment from Judge Michael J. Davis. "Even though we're out in provincial Minnesota," he told the out-of-state lawyers on both sides, "people are going online" to view case materials, and he wanted even banal housekeeping motions filed electronically for that reason.
The majesty of the law was present in the polished wood and flat panel TVs of the courtroom, but the retrial itself began without much in the way of "majestic" proceedings. First up was the record labels. Attorney Matt Oppenheim—who might well work a side gig as a Rick Warren body double—confirmed to the court what we learned from the RIAA last week: the recording industry did in fact manage to obtain "certified" copies of its "true and correct" copyright registration forms from the Copyright Office in Washington.
Or, as Oppenheim put it, "Now we have them on the fancy paper the Copyright Office provides."
Not that Thomas-Rasset's legal team will let the registrations go unchallenged; if they can find some way to invalidate them, the whole case falls apart, and lead attorney Kiwi Camara told the judge that he does intend to object to introducing the "new" documents at this late stage in the case. Oppenheim pointedly indicated that the "new" documents were in fact identical to those the industry has provided for years. The issue will be decided during trial.
Meet your jurors
The rest of the morning was taken up with jury selection, a tedious procedure that appeared to confirm Minnesota's reputation as a place of Lutheran virtue and hard work. Of the 19 people called up for questioning, no one admitted to having used Napster, KaZaA, or a P2P file-sharing program—and this despite the presence of several college students and recent grads.
One juror said that his friend was a heavy user and that he had downloaded a couple songs from his friend's account, but he had stopped because he "didn't want to get caught and go be... here." (Laughter from court.) Another juror also said that a friend used LimeWire and had given him "a couple CDs" filled with songs. He didn't know much about the process beyond the fact that "everybody does it." Finally, one man had a son with a new iPod who had allowed a friend to load it up with some songs from the friend's collection.
Most responses to these sorts of questions sounded like something right out of a Cupertino PR campaign, though. Apart from one guy with a Sandisk player, the personal music player of choice was the iPod. Just about everyone claimed to get their music from iTunes, though the Sandisk guy actually used Amazon instead.
When the entire jury pool was asked if they had any opinion on the recording industry, even if it was just about the price of CDs, not a single hand went up.
Throughout it all, Jammie Thomas-Rasset sat quietly, flanked by her three lawyers. The recording industry's five-person legal team sat across the courtroom wearing arguably better ties than the defense team. (The recording industry legal team includes two women, who were not wearing ties, including Jennifer Pariser of the RIAA who is overseeing the case for the trade group.)
After tossing out four jurors (the ones who had the most experience with file-sharing friends), the court was left with a 12-person jury: five men and seven women, all white, ranging in age from college students to retirees.
The judge then gave some instructions. Jurors were not to blog during the trial. They were not to put anything "on your Facebook." And under no circumstances were they to "tweet"—an expression that clearly pleased the judge, who used it three or four times.
He displayed a list of songs that Thomas-Rasset was alleged to have shared online, which was the morning's most unintentionally poignant moment. Thomas-Rasset had earlier been ordered to pay $222,000 for such aural splendors as "Pour Some Sugar on Me," "Now and Forever," "Hella Good," "Bills, Bills, Bills," and "Don't Stop Believin'"—which may have been the real crime in the first trial. (OK, "Don't Stop Believin'" may in fact have deserved the almost $10,000 in damages.)
The case, which is expected to stretch into next week, resumes this afternoon with a full jury, opening statements, and the first witnesses for the recording industry. Stay tuned for further reports.
The complete trial account (in chronological order)
- Day one: Jury selection
- Day one: Opening statements, first witnesses
- Day two: The recording industry's major misstep
- Day two: Jammie Thomas-Rasset takes the stand
- Day three: Thomas-Rasset appears as the only defense witness
- Day four: Closing arguments
Listing image by United Artists
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