Jury verdict in copyright trial

There's been a flurry of articles about various recording companies and their downloading suit against Jammie Thomas, a woman went through with the trail against her regarding illegally downloaded and distributed music. (See for example: Jury finds woman violated copyright law in download trial, victory for record companies). A post yesterday on Ars Technica suggests that an appeal may be in the making over a disputed instruction to the jury. Instruction #15 was changed from

The mere act of making copyrighted sound recordings available for electronic distribution on a peer-to-peer network without license from copyright owners does not violate the copyright owners' exclusive right to distribution. An actual transfer must take place

to

The act of making copyrighted sound recordings available for electronic distribution on a peer-to-peer network, without license from the copyright owners, violates the copyright owners' exclusive right of distribution, regardless of whether actual distribution has been shown.

How the RIAA tasted victory: a perfect storm which might not be repeated
By Eric Bangema