That’s so obvious to you & me and the people who read news like this on p2pnet.
Most people are online now, but are they reading news? I’m not so sure.
I would love to see a study about the level of public general knowledge about the whole file-sharing/downloading/”stealing” issue.

But the only thing that matter these days is the net as far news are concerned.

A know only few people that still take serioulsy the news from the mass media.

This is one of the mistake the corporate parasites are making. They still believe that people watch the news on TV and take it serioulsy.

May be you are talking about the older generation who bring us the curently dying entertainment industry of thugs?

They only suffer from some bad publicity on the net.
Almost everyone I talked to on the street who had any knowledge of this case only know that somebody somewhere got fined over $2G for sharing some songs. ‘Cause that’s all they ever recall reading in the newpaper.
They truly believe that sharing songs must be theft or that wouldn’t have happened in a court of law.
(And those people are all Canadians!)

If it was the RIAA’s plan to send a chill over internet song sharing, they have accomplished this.
Was it worth it to them? Who will do the math?
Do they act alone or is there quiet help from others who share an interest in Internet Chill?

Thanks for all of your hard work Brian! By Anonymous Anonymous, at May 20, 2009 6:55:00 PM EDT Mr. Toder may have spent lots of time and tried hard here. But would the second trial have even been necessary and might Jammie have even won outright if Mr.Toder had done the most basic case law research in the first trial? Did he even look at Nimmer’s treatise? As Judge Davis had to point out himself on May 15, 2008: The Court is concerned that Jury Instruction No. 15 may have been contrary to binding Eighth Circuit precedent. In National Car Rental System, Inc. v. Computer ssociates Int’l, Inc., the Eighth Circuit stated that “‘[i]nfringement of [the distribution right] requires an actual dissemination of either copies or phonorecords.’ 2 Nimmer on Copyright § 8.11[A], at 8?124.1.” 991 F.2d 426, 434 (8th Cir. 1993). This statement appears to require that actual dissemination occur in order to infringe the distribution right under the Copyright Act. Neither party presented this Eighth Circuit case to the Court.

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I agree with Scott and Anonymous Lost in Thought. Brian made an important contribution. He was man enough to stand up for a defenseless woman, and spend countless hours on her behalf. Being a trial lawyer, and knowing how many decisions have to be made, I know that it is an impossible task to second guess a trial lawyer. Are there things he could have done that he didn’t do? Undoubtedly. Were they things he should have done? We’ll never know, because we do not have as much knowledge of the case, or of what was going on in the case, as he did. He never signed on to handle the case without getting paid, so he was perfectly within his rights to withdraw from the representation. And Jammie never challenged that. The RIAA smelled blood in the water here, and swooped in on him in a way they have never before done in any other case. They probably spent more than half a million dollars on this case. All they ever got out of their ludicrous verdict was a lot of bad publicity. So as far as I am concerned, all respect to Brian Toder. And all respect to his valiant client Jammie Thomas. And all respect to the firebrands who have taken up the cudgel against the prince of darkness Matthew Oppenheim, and his running dogs.