Judge Michael J. Davis overturned a landmark federal jury decision against single mom Jammie Thomas, who was found guilty of copyright infringement and ordered to pay $222,000 in damages to the infamous RIAA. Thomas was found sharing 24 songs that she legitimately owned on Kazaa, but RIAA could not prove that anybody downloaded them.

Judge Michael J. Davis overturned the ruling because he acknowledged that he erroneously instructed the federal jury that making a file available for download over a P2P network violated the record labels' distribution right under the Copyright Act. Thus a mistrial was declared and Jammie Thomas is entitled to a new trial, which RIAA will certainly push for.

Judge Michael Davis also blasted the ludicrous $222,000 amount that Jammie Thomas was ordered to pay. He pointed out that the 24 songs cost about $54 to buy, which means that the single mom was ordered to pay around 4,000 times that amount. The 12-person jury ordered Thomas to pay $9,250 for each of the 24 songs central to the case, amounting to a total of $222,000.

The woman appealed the verdict, saying that the record companies involved in the lawsuit did not actually incur that much in damages. Last December, the U.S. Department of Justice failed to side with Jammie Thomas from Minnesota in her appeal that called a $222,000 award to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) unconstitutional. Acting Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Bucholts said last December that the damages assessed by the jury against the woman were not excessive.