Mathew Ingram spots some interesting news on the Jammie Thomas front:

In a decision that could have far-reaching implications for future lawsuits by the record industry involving peer-to-peer networks, the judge who was hearing the Jammie Thomas case has thrown out the decision in that case, effectively declaring a mistrial, saying he now believes he was wrong to have instructed the jury that simply “making available” copyrighted files was enough to find Thomas guilty of copyright infringement. In the original case, the judge said that it was not necessary to show that anyone had actually download the files, but he now believes that this was wrong, and that actual distribution must be shown, not just that the files were available

The damages assessed in that case were absurd - and the loss of this case makes the entire "sue the customers" strategy look even dumber. Now that the labels are making music freely available (with ads) on MySpace, it's time that they stopped acting like a protection racket.

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