RIAA v. Somebody's Momma or Virgin v. Thomas

Quick background:
* September 2003: RIAA adopts what is politely described as a "zero-tolerance" policy on file-sharing and files over 20,000 lawsuits against individual users of file-sharing software, including Napster, Kazaa, Audiogalaxy, etc. RIAA tracks users who share files by finding the IP addresses of those who allow others to download files from their computers.
* Spring 2007: RIAA comes after college and university students, filing a near 400 lawsuits for copyright infringement and sending notice to students' home universities. RIAA also sends settlement letters to the universities themselves, offering students the opportunity to settle: without making the suits public and for a significantly lower settlement amount than would likely result from trial. Where the students refuse or do not respond to the settlement letters, the RIAA proceeds with legal action.
* Spring 2007: 15 University of Georgia students are served with suits and settlement letters.

Tomorrow, the nation's first copyright infringement trial by jury will commence in the U.S. District Court in Duluth, Minnesota. Jannie Thomas, a mid-thirties mom from Brainerd, Minnesota, is being sued by the RIAA, including companies such as Virgin, Capitol, SonyBMG, Arista, Interscope, Warner Bros., and Universal Music Group. Thomas is being sued for allegedly downloading 1,702 files from Kazaa back in '05 and faces a requested potential $3.9M in damages + legal fees.

Jury selection begins tomorrow, and the trial itself may begin too, depending on the speed of jury selection.