Even as Tanya Andersen refilled her malicious prosecution lawsuit last week, the RIAA won a victories in two unrelated lawsuits. One involved a case where the defendant never showed up in court; the other a defendant who admitted to using KaZaA to download and distribute music.

James V. Lewis was sued by the labels in August 2007 after an IP address flagged by MediaSentry was traced to his ISP account. Lewis never showed up in court, and the RIAA filed for a default judgment in October. Initially, the judge declined to give the labels what they were looking for, instead scheduling a hearing to discuss the case.

After a hearing held last week, the judge gave the RIAA what it was looking for: a default judgment in the amount of $3,000 plus an additional $420 in court costs. Lewis has also been barred from infringing on "any other sound recording, whether now in existence or later created, that is owned or controlled by the Plaintiffs."

The other case, Atlantic v. Anderson, involves a Texas resident who was sued in November 2006 for copyright infringement. Abner Anderson decided to fight the lawsuit, submitting a brief answer to the RIAA's complaint in which he did little more than deny the labels' accusations. He also said that any infringement that did take place was due to the negligence on the part of the RIAA.

The RIAA moved for summary judgment in the case, arguing that Anderson's making the songs in question available on KaZaA was the same as distributing them, and that the facts of the case were indisputable.

Anderson disagreed. In his response to the RIAA's motion, he argued that the problem of illegal downloading was the result of the recording industry's own negligence. "Without an official statement, the distribution of literature from Plaintiffs, or something to inform the public of actions that constitute copyright infringement, the public could not be expected to know that using this software network was improper," argued Anderson. He also noted that he planned to challenge the constitutionality of the statutory damages sought by the RIAA, as other defendants have done.

Judge Vanessa D. Gilmore was unconvinced. In her decision, she pointed out that Anderson had admitted to downloading and using KaZaA during discovery. Furthermore, his screen name matched the one flagged by MediaSentry, and he admitted to "actively distributing" music to other KaZaA users. "Defendant concedes that he did place the subject Copyrighted Recordings in his shared folder for distribution to other users while being connected to KaZaA," she wrote in her opinion.

Judge Gilmore also touched on the RIAA's argument that making a file available over P2P constitutes infringement. "Numerous courts have assessed whether availing music and/or media for downloaded by other users on a peer-to-peer network constitutes copyright infringement as a matter of law," wrote the judge. "Accordingly... because it has been both proven and admitted to that the Defendant intentionally downloaded and/or distributed those Copyrighted Recordings, no genuine issue of material fact remains as to Plaintiffs' claim for copyright infringement."

The RIAA was awarded $23,250, or $750 in statutory damages for each of the 31 songs named in the lawsuit, plus $420 in court costs. Judge Gilmore took issue with Anderson's argument that the damages sought by the RIAA were excessive. "Yet, the true cost of Defendant's harms in distributing Plaintiffs' Copyrighted Recordings for download by other users on KaZaA is incalculable," wrote the judge in her opinion. "That is, there is no way to ascertain the precise amount of damages caused by the Defendant's actions."

The Anderson case may prove significant for the RIAA because of the ruling on the statutory damages question; an RIAA spokesperson said that the group would be "citing it often" in other cases. It's important to note, however, that the defendant's failed to raise the "making available = infringement" question in his defense. Indeed, his admission that he knowingly set up and used KaZaA to download and share music on the P2P service may have precluded him from doing so.

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