After just 3 hours of deliberation, the jury in the RIAA vs. Joel Tenebaum has ordered the student to pay $675,000 in damages or $22,500 for each of the 30 songs that he downloaded.
When asked about the size verdict, Tenenbaum's attorney and Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson told Ars that "it's a bankrupting award." Nesson believed that the outcome might have been different if he had been allowed to argue Fair Use. "We were not allowed to speak to fairness," he told Ars. "I thought we had pretty damn good arguments on Fair Use."
Tenebaum said that we would probably declaore bankrupcy if the award were not overturned.
