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U.S. District Judge Thomas Griesa, who will preside over the
trial in federal court in Manhattan, said in a court order on
Thursday that because of Grooveshark's actions he will tell
jurors they can choose to award the statutory maximum of
$150,000 in damages per song.
Jurors also could decide to award less. But if the jury awards
that amount, Grooveshark's parent company, Escape Media Group
Inc, could be forced to pay more than $736 million.
Last September, Griesa ruled that Escape and its founders,
Samuel Tarantino and Joshua Greenberg, were liable for the
illegal uploads of thousands of recordings by artists such as
Madonna, Eminem, Bob Marley and Jay-Z.
Griesa said the defendants had directed their employees to make
the uploads in spite of the legal risk. The only question to be
resolved at Monday's trial is how much Escape must pay as in
penalties for the infringement.
Nine record companies including Arista Music, Sony Music
Entertainment, UMG Recordings, and Warner Bros Records, sued
Escape for infringement in 2011.
Griesa found in September that Escape's business plan was to
exploit the copyrighted content in order to grow Grooveshark and
then "beg forgiveness" from the labels.
Escape hopes to limit its losses at trial by arguing there were
mitigating circumstances to the infringement, according to court
papers. In Thursday's order, Griesa said he will allow the
company to present evidence of its attempts to secure licenses
from the record labels.
Gainesville, Florida-based Grooveshark describes itself as "one
of the largest on-demand music services on the Internet" with
more than 30 million users sharing over 15 million files. The
company says it has a policy to honor copyright holders'
"takedown" requests that comply with the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act.
In court papers, the plaintiffs have called Grooveshark a
"linear descendant" of Grokster, LimeWire and Napster, all of
which had been shut down because of copyright infringement.
A spokesman for Grooveshark said the company had no comment.
Representatives for the record labels could not immediately be
reached.
The case is UMG Recording Inc et al v. Escape Media Group Inc et
al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No.
11-08407.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung; editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and
David Gregorio)
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