Thank you for joining me on such occasion. I thought this wasn't going to be a big deal, but at the end of the day, Show 100 became a reaffirmation of my love for this thing we do. Kudos to you if you catch the Jersey Todd trivia. Featuring the music of:

1. The Wylde Bunch
2. Stefanie Seskin
3. Danko Jones
4. Beth Hirsch
5. Geoff Smith

Featuring Marco Pesci

Listen to the show here

For our hundredth show, and in celebration of Halloween, and all of those Podcamps going on this time of year, its time for another Jersey Todd Ghost Story. Settle into your sleeping bags. Maybe cook up one more of those s’mores thingies. Mr. Curry, one more puff before bed. Mr. Nemcoff, hands on top of the covers. Here we go.

It was a dark and stormy night. No wait, that’s too cliché. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Eh, never really understood that one. Being a small-town Midwest girl, I had no idea that an all girl nursing school located near a truck stop would be such an adventure – oh wait, that’s another project that I’m working on. Let’s just start by telling you about the people.

Jammie Thomas is a 30-year old, single mother from Duluth, Minnesota. She is a hard working mom of two children – ages 11 and 13 years old, and when she gets tired and bored, after the end of a long day, she turns to that one source of entertainment that you and I take for granted – her personal computer. Except, this past year, that personal computer has become her own peripheral of horrors, a silicon pariah, a virtual blood-sucking, money grabbing money hole.

Like so many others, she was accused by those ghouls at the Recording Industry Association of America – the RIAA – of hosting 1,702 songs on Kazaa. Actually, lets be more specific, over the last few years, the RIAA has sued over 26,000 people. But in Ms. Thomas’ case, the RIAA wanted to get her for over 1.2 million dollars. I know Boo! Scary.

Most people take the dive. Most people run and hide like they just saw a ghost, but not Jammie Thomas. No Ms. Thomas didn’t just settle give the RIAA $4,000 of her money and hope that they go away, no she did what every brave American should do. She hired a lawyer, and then when negotiations broke down, she did what every brave American should do, she took her case to trial.

However, here’s the problem. She didn’t really have a very good case. She was accused of hosting a mere 1700 files on Kazaa. I really believe that her lawyer treated it like a simple criminal matter, which does indeed make sense because she is being accused of stealing. His main argument was in the great tradition of Matlock in that he said, well nobody saw you upload the tracks, which really doesn’t do much when the RIAA brings experts to Court to say that the music was uploaded from her internet address and from her password. But, you know, the thrust of the "wasn’t me" argument always has legs in criminal court. In fact, I represented a kid in Chester, Pennsylvania about ten-times who apparently was always at the bus-stop, or his aunt’s house, and had ten cousins that looked just like him.

The problem is that this was not a criminal case, and the RIAA did not have to prove their claims beyond a reasonable doubt, they just had to do so by a preponderance of the evidence, and like I’ve said so many times on this program, all you have to do to show a "preponderance of the evidence" is to show that it is more likely than not that you did something wrong, and in the case of Ms. Thomas her lawyer was kidding themselves allowing this client to take this case to trial. Sure, she had a defense, but when the risks outweighed the rewards, even I would have told her to pony up the four grand and bail out of the situation as quick as humanly possible.

So, she decided to do her best Doyle Brunson, and pushed her chips all in, and took her case to trial. In fact, Ms. Thomas’ case just went to the jury this week, and again showing the wisdom of a State that elected a professional wrestler to Governor, this Minnesota jury found Jammie guilty of copyright infringement. But you want to talk about going flop on the river card, Ms. Thomas went bust for $222,000. What this means, in my Poker to English dictionary is she’s now on the hook for a huge problemo.

So its come to this, has it RIAA. Its come to getting irrational judgments against single mothers. Its come to beating up grandmothers and the infirm. For what? For who? This isn’t about protecting the artists. Copyright law has far exceeded any kind of protection that the artists require. This is essentially the same as if your kid gave a copy of your CD to a neighbor, and you ended up losing your house. It just doesn’t make any sense any more. Oh, and just so you know, from the lawyer’s perspective, he probably counts this as a win – because he got it down from 1700 songs to 24. That’s pretty good, and in a criminal case the guy would be a genius. But in a civil case, where its mandatory fees of $9,250 per song – 24 songs add up very, very quickly.

You want to take one quote from this show, and print it out of context. You want to take one quote and put it up there in boldface let me make it easier for you. When I first started hanging around the Courts, the first Judge that I worked for was 80-years old and couldn’t tell the difference between the power-button on a computer and a candy-button in a trick-or-treat bag. The law catches up to society, and right now the enforcement of copyright has caught up to 1992.

But what they don’t get. What the RIAA doesn’t get is that the war is over. Its over, and I’m not talking about podcasts, or mp3 blogs, or Kazaa, or any of the millions of ways that you can get your music before you even get to itunes. No I’m talking about the public perception of the value of music. When you’re too cheap to buy a girl you like some flowers, you make her a mix-tape. When you’re in a car with someone you have nothing in common with, you turn on the radio with a hope that it will fill the dead space between you. Music is like air, its like water.

Lets be even more honest with ourselves. We don’t by music for the music. We buy it for a lot of reasons. I buy music because I like the personality of the artist. I buy it because I have a connection to the band. I buy them. I buy the story. I buy music when it makes me want to feel something. I buy it because the first time I heard it the song made me feel cool or tough or strong or in love, and I want that feeling again and again. I buy music for the memories. Music is a souvenir of a time and a place. What kind of value does that have? What should the artist get, and let me be clear, I make a huge difference between a musician and an artist. Any kid in Ms. Silverberg’s 8th grade music class is a musician – they may be a crappy one – but they are a musician, but an artist is someone that can create a place, and a time, in between my ears and that certainly deserves compensation.Art is the only place that we actually can try to put a formula on emotion. Sure, I’ll pay 99 cents when I like a track, but do I get 50 cents back when it starts getting on my nerves. I’m talking to you cast of High School Musical. This is something that can’t be decided by a simple podcaster on a simple show that only 10,000 people download on a weekly basis. Eh, just checking to see if you’re still listening. But what I can do is give you some knowledge. I can bust some tasty tasty science on your mad cerebellum. So, let me throw you something that I’m sure Ms. Thomas’ lawyer didn’t talk about in his closing argument, and I really think that its something that should be strongly encouraged in every case involving the RIAA. Jury Nullification. The jury system in this country was founded upon the idea that a panel of citizens, sitting for a short time, was incorruptible. My main man, DJ Tommy Tom Thomas Jefferson said "I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." Jury nullification is the idea where a jury can listen to the Judge’s instructions, their summation of the law, and say nyyyyah, we’re not going for it, and I’m not at all advocating that jury nullification be used in every case. We have laws for a reason, and although people may like or dislike the results in individual cases, jury nullification if abused could really upset the apple cart of the judiciary and legislative branch. But what if the judiciary and legislature are already lost on an issue? It has been said that the jury is the last line of defense against a tyriannical government. What do we have when we deal with the RIAA and their stranglehold over copyright law? The copyright code is 200 pages, it is incomprehensible, and the RIAA has full time lobbyists who’s main job is to increase the strength of the copyright code.   Any lawyer worth their salt had better start thinking about it if ever involved with a lawsuit by the RIAA, and jury nullification is a very, very touchy subject for trial judges.

But in any case where the power of sentencing, or determining of damages, has already been abrogated by statute, I truly believe that jury nullification – where the jury can determine what makes sense to punish someone like Jammie Thomas, makes absolute sense. And at the end of the day, boys and girls, the RIAA is scary. Its like this big ghost like thing that hovers over all of our heads. But remember when you were a little kid and you finally got the courage to look under the bed, and you didn’t see a ghost? Remember, when you looked in the closet, and finally saw that there really wasn’t a monster. It was about the control, and maybe now is the time that some of our juries start looking at monsters like the RIAA and saying we’re not scared of you.

Happy Halloween everyone.