One of the longest running file-sharing lawsuits has come to a close, as Denise Barker and the RIAA have mutually agreed to settle a three-year-old lawsuit for $6,050. Barker has been represented by Ray Beckerman, known for his Recording Industry vs The People blog, who used the case as a platform to attack the foundations upon which the RIAA has built its legal campaign.
Barker had admitted to using KaZaA, but argued that the statutory damages sought by the RIAA were unconstitutionally excessive with damages. Instead, Beckerman argued that damages should be capped at no more than $3.50 per song—five times the amount the record labels would have made from a legal download. Barker also accused the RIAA of using an unlicensed private investigator (MediaSentry)—a charge which has been cropping up with some regularity in other contested cases—and was one of the first cases to argue that simply making a file available over a P2P network was not copyright infringement as defined by the Copyright Act.
Stretching out the litigation proved costly to both parties. Barker could have settled the case for $4,000 once she received one of the RIAA's infamous prelitigation settlement letters. Instead, she's paying $6,050 plus attorneys' fees—a bit over $750 per song. And while the settlement can be construed as a victory for the RIAA, it's something of a pyrrhic one as the organization certainly had to pay far, far more than that in attorneys' fees, underscoring the RIAA's assertion that its legal campaign against P2P users is a money-losing proposition.