Attorney: Appeal of $222,000 verdict could stop RIAA%u2019s lawsuit machine

Atlanta (GA) – In an interview given to CNN this morning, Jammie Thomas and her attorney Brian Toder announced that they would appeal the $222,000 judgment handed to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in a music piracy case last week.

Jammie Thomas noted during the brief interview that she was devastated by verdict and also answered questions why she decided not to settle out of court before the case went to trial. She blamed the accusation on ID theft and stated she “didn’t do this” and “did not want to be bullied by the RIAA.”

Thomas also said that while she has ripped about 90% of her CDs and stored the content on her computer, she never used the Kazaa file sharing program. She stated that she only engaged in file sharing for a business study years ago using the Napster client.

Brian Toder, Thomas’ attorney, told CNN that he will be taking the case to the court of appeals. He said that if successful, an appeal could “open the door to stop this whole machine” and may put end to the RIAAs strategy of “harvesting” user by user.

During the proceedings, he intends to address the issue of simply offering files for sharing versus an actual sharing of files : “That has not been squarely addressed by a court of appeals yet,” he said. Toder did not comment on Thomas’ claim that she actually never has been a user of Kazaa.