On Tuesday, Acting Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Bucholtz filed a 20-page brief in the U.S. District Court in Minnesota indicating the jury-assessed damages against Jammie Thomas, a single mom from an Indian reservation, were not excessive.

"Given the findings of copyright infringement in this case, the damages awarded under the Copyright Act's statutory damages provision did not violate the Due Process Clause" of the Constitution, the brief noted. The damages were not "so severe and oppressive as to be wholly disproportioned to the offense...."

Thomas' Copyright Crimes

The brief was the government's response to Thomas' motion challenging the constitutionality of the $222,000 a judge ordered her to pay for infringing the copyrights of six music labels: Virgin Records, Warner Bros., UMG Recordings, Sony BMG, Capitol Records, and Interscope Records.

The plaintiffs, which claimed that Thomas distributed copyrighted audio files on file-sharing network Kazaa in 2005, asked for $3.9 million, plus legal fees, from the jury in the U.S. District Court in Duluth, Minnesota. The case was the first of its kind in the nation.

The jury did not give the RIAA everything it wanted, but decided Thomas should pay $9,250 for each of the 24 songs highlighted in the case. Statutes allow damages ranging from between $750 and $30,000 per infringement. The maximum monetary penalty for each willful violation is $150,000.

Thomas' Losing Argument

Under oath, Thomas denied a folder on the Kazaa network belonged to her. But experts testified that the Internet address used by "tereastar," the name of the Kazaa user who infringed, belonged to Thomas. Thomas appealed the ruling.

Thomas' grounds for appealing the verdict? The damages were excessive. She argued that the statutory minimum of $750 per song was too much. The Department of Justice dismissed the argument, noting that the penalty has a two-fold purpose of ensuring both a compensatory and deterrent purpose.

"Although defendant claims that plaintiffs' damages are 70 cents per infringing copy , it is unknown how many other users -- potentially millions -- committed subsequent acts of infringement with the illegal copies of works that the defendant infringed," Bucholtz said. "It is impossible to calculate the damages caused by a single infringement, particularly for infringement that occurs over the Internet."

Too Little, Too Late?

Phil Leigh, senior analyst at Inside Digital Media, said the DOJ's decision was not a surprise. But does this mean the RIAA will get more aggressive in pursuing copyright infringers in hopes of repeating its success? "We've probably seen the peak of lawsuit activity from the RIAA," Leigh said. "There are a number of legitimate alternatives that are developing that tend to take traffic away from the illegal practice."

In the time it took the Thomas case to make its way through the court system , Leigh said, there have been dramatic changes in the digital media landscape. Music that is free of digital rights management is becoming more popular through legal venues, for example. What's more, Leigh said, peer-to-peer networks have gained a reputation for being infected with malware, which discourages use.