The Recording Industry Association of America said weeks ago that it was finished with suing housewives and teenagers, mechanics and doctors — and anyone else suspected of illegally downloading and sharing copyrighted music over the Internet.

So why can’t the industry let go of its case against Jammie Thomas? The Brainerd woman’s trial last year in Duluth caught the attention of the nation. A jury found Thomas guilty after 24 pilfered songs somehow ended up on the hard drive of her home computer. She was ordered to pay $222,000. But in September, a federal judge granted her a new trial after concluding that he made mistakes while offering instructions to the jury.

The retrial is scheduled for March. The recording industry could save an overburdened court system the cost and time of another round of arguments and deliberations by dropping the case in favor of its new strategy for cracking down on music piracy. Earlier this month, the industry announced that it would begin working with Internet service providers to restrict and ultimately withdraw abusers’ Web access if they ignored repeated warnings.

The new approach has to be more effective than the old one. In five years, the industry sued more than 30,000 people, settling out of court with most for a few thousand dollars apiece, not enough to even cover the cost of going to trial. And the cases failed to determine what constitutes copyright infringement. Is it when a song is made available on a computer for others to download? What if no one does? Proving a song was illegally received is difficult at best, even in court.

Still, the industry has refused to relent on Thomas, who has refused to settle. Her lawyer told the News Tribune for a Dec. 29 story that the industry was determined to make “an example” of her.

If the case does go to another trial, perhaps the do-over will answer when piracy occurs. Perhaps it’ll also get to the bottom of a more basic question: Is it wrong in an online world to copy music files for personal use? The legality and morality of file sharing should have been the focus of the first go-around.

— Duluth News Tribune, Dec. 31