UPDATE: O, Tenenbaum, O, Tenenbaum, the High Court Says It's Over

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)The United States Supreme Court today denied certiorari in Tenenbaum v. Sony BMG Music et al. (Docket No. 11-1019), leaving former Boston University student Joel Tenenbaum of Providence, Rhode Island, on the hook for a $675,000 copyright infringement jury award to the Recording Industry Association of America.

Justice Stephen Breyer and Chief Justice John Roberts did not participate in the ruling, according to the Associated Press. Harvard Law School Prof. Charles Nesson filed a petition for certiorari on February 13, 2012, seeking to overturn a jury verdict that awarded the RIAA $22,500 for each of 30 songs Tenenbaum unlawfully downloaded and shared from the now-defunct peer-to-peer network KaZaA in 2004.

The petitioner had asked the High Court to address whether the damages provision of the U.S. Copyright Act [17 U.S.C. sec. 504] "applied to noncommercial individuals without requirement of nexus with actual damages." U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts Judge Nancy Gertner reduced the damages award as excessive, but the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the First Circuit reinstated the jury verdict last year. (See "TUOL" posts 9/19/11, 7/9/10, 8/3/09 & 7/28/09.)

UPDATE: Illegal Downloader Slammed to Tune of $675k

Image by arcticpenguin via Flickr

Twenty-five-year-old BU grad student Joel Tenenbaum of Providence, R.I., has been ordered by a Massachusetts jury to pay four record companies $675,000 in total for downloading 30 copyrighted songs in 2004 through the KaZaA peer-to-peer network.

Tenenbaum, only the second defendant in a music downloading case ever to go to trial in the nation, could have faced a judgment of up to $4.5 million under the copyright statute for willful infringement, rather than the $22,500 for each of the 30 tunes. (See "TUOL" post 7/28/09.) Tenenbaum's legal team, headed by Harvard Law Prof. Charles Nesson, is expected to appeal the verdict based on U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts Judge Nancy Gertner's ruling that precluded "fair use" as a defense.

The case is (Capitol Records, Inc. v. Noor Alaujan, Case No. 03-cv-11661; Sony BMG Music Entertainment et al. v. Joel Tenenbaum, Case No. 07-cv-114446).