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Internet provider Grande Communications' challenge of a $47 million music piracy verdict has failed to achieve the desired result. A Texas federal court denied Grande's request for trial as a matter of law or a new trial. This means that the company will now take its dispute with the major record labels to the Court of Appeals.
Last fall, a Texas federal jury found Grande Communications liable for willful copyright infringement and ordered the ISP to pay $47 million in damage to a group of record labels.
District Court Judge David Ezra upheld the sentence in January. This was a clear mistake, according to Grande, who hoped it would be overturned.
ISP wants a repeat
In March, the Internet provider filed a new judgment motion as a matter of law. Simply put, Grande wanted the judge to overturn the jury's decision. This is justified if the evidence clearly weighs in favor of the requesting party, but when a jury determines otherwise.
If that's not an option, the ISP asked the court for a new trial to allow the hacking liability issues to come up again before a new jury.
Yesterday, US District Court Judge David Ezra ruled on the motion, denying both requests. According to the order, there is nothing wrong with the jury's verdict and the court also made no clear errors.
Rejected request
In making its case, the ISP raised a wide variety of issues, including the argument that there was no evidence of copyright infringement at trial.
For example, there were no copies of the 1,403 original copyrighted works to compare with the allegedly pirated music tracks. Also, it was unclear if the offenders were actually Grande subscribers, rather than unauthorized users of the network, such as neighbors stealing Wi-Fi.
Judge Ezra sees things differently. In his order, he writes that the evidence included a hard drive of downloaded files and detailed testimony showing that the downloads matched copyrighted sound recordings.
self-destructive admission
The idea that strangers could have used the connections of Grande's subscribers also had no impact. According to the order, Grande herself argued at trial that subscribers are responsible for everything that occurs through their connection.
โGrande undermined his theory about unauthorized users committing infringements by admitting at trial that he holds his subscribers fully responsible for all conduct that occurs on their accounts, whether they are authorized users or not,โ Judge Ezra writes.
The ISP also argued that the evidence did not prove that Grande's users actually uploaded the hacked tracks to others. Once again, the court found the argument unconvincing.
Judge Ezra emphasizes that "actual dissemination" of pirated content is not necessary to prove direct infringement of a distribution theory; it is enough to show that it was "available".
Sufficient evidence of 'distribution'
In this case, the court believes that there was sufficient direct and circumstantial evidence that Grande's users uploaded pirated content. Some of this evidence comes from the music company's piracy tracking partner, Rightscorp.
"Plaintiffs Provided Evidence Of Actual Uploads By Grande Users And Downloads By Rightscorp: Rightscorp Reapproached Grande Users Who Had Previously Offered The Work To Copy And Download At Least One Full Copy Of The Work," writes the Judge Ezra.
Overall, the court concludes that Grande does not present a suitable case for a new trial or trial.
โNeither Grande's legal nor evidentiary arguments justify a trial as a matter of law or a new trial. Accordingly, the Court DENIES the Renewal of Grande's Sentencing Request as a Question of Law or a New Trial," the final order read.
forthcoming appeal
This effectively means that the $47 million music piracy verdict stands. However, this is still not the end of the legal dispute, as there are more options to challenge the result.
The ISP previously indicated that it would appeal the jury's verdict in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit if its motion is denied. Therefore, we hope that an appeal will be filed in the near future.
Grande hasn't been able to catch a break from court recently. In addition to this week's multi-million dollar verdict and rejection, his motion to dismiss a separate piracy liability lawsuit against the filmmakers was also denied.
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A copy of the US District Court judge's order. available here (pdf)
