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As of today, federal judge Denny Chin granted a motion to delay the planned October 7th Google Book settlement. In a trial rife with controversy, Chin noted that it was pointless to hold a hearing on a settlement when key points were still being negotiated with the Department of Justice. According to the New York Times, "The first clear signs that the settlement in its current form would be derailed came late Friday, when the Justice Department raised a number of legal and antitrust objections to it." Nevertheless, with so many objections filed, it appears to the public like the revision process has never really stopped.

As we reported earlier this week, the retrial of Jammie Thomas-Rasset, who was accused of illegally sharing 24 songs on Kazaa, was about to come to an end this week. In an earlier trial, Thomas-Rasset was ordered to pay $220,000 to the music companies, but today, a different judge and a different jury came back with a new verdict that was surely not what Thomas-Rasset was looking for. A federal jury, clearly unconvinced by Thomas-Rasset's defense, awarded the recording companies $1.92 million - which comes out to $80,0000 per shared song.

Jammie Thomas vs. Capitol is probably the most infamous and longest running illegal file sharing case in the U.S., and while a judge declared a mistrial last September, the two parties met once again this week to begin Thomas' retrial. In almost every other file sharing case, the defendants settled with the RIAA out of court, but when Jammie Thomas was accused of illegally sharing 24 songs on the once incredibly popular Kazaa P2P network in February 2005, she decided to fight back. Since then, the two parties have gone through a trial, conviction, a mistrial, and now the retrial of Thomas is well under way and just entered its second day.