by SHANE SINNOTT

If you follow the RIAA lawsuit stuff, you’ll remember Joel Tenenbaum, a student in Boston who was sued for illegal downloading by the RIAA. In one of only two cases like it to ever get to trial, a jury awarded damages of $675,000 to the RIAA for sharing 31 songs using the Kazaa file-sharing app. Poor Joel planned to file for bankruptcy, but things might have changed as a judge has recently reduced the damages to $67,500 on appeal. What’s most important is that Judge Nancy Gertner pointed out that the damages are way out of whack with what’s assessed against businesses—namely, bars and restaurants that get caught playing music in public they don’t have licences for. “These [bars etc.] are arguably more culpable than Tenenbaum. Unlike Tenenbaum, who did not receive any direct pecuniary [pertaining to money, dummy] gain from his file-sharing, defendants in these cases play copyrighted music to create a more pleasurable atmosphere for their customers.” She points out a resort that was sued in 2008 for playing songs without licences and assessed damages of $6,750. In sum, “I cannot conceive of any plausible rationale for the discrepancy between the level of damages imposed in public-performance cases and the damages awarded in this case.”

In a related note, according to the Recording Industry vs. the People blog (bit.ly/dCuZGM), the RIAA is losing a ton of money in these lawsuits. If you’re into knocking the association, you’ll like that in 2008, they spent $17-million on legal fees, and were able to recover $391,000 in damages. Of course, the RIAA will argue that this is money well spent to stop downloading, but the various studies pointing to a steady increase in music downloading don’t bear this out.

To follow up on that wacko Liz Phair song I showed you last week, a visit to her website, lizphair.com, now reveals a tinge of regret, or maybe just a general messing-with-people. In big letters, she writes, “You were never supposed to hear these songs. These songs lost me my management, my record deal and a lot of nights of sleep.” Check back for updates.