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Donors come to aid of BU student in download case

E-mail|Link|Comments () August 5, 2009 08:30 AM

By Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff

Joel Tenenbaum may have to pay four record labels a total of $675,000 in damages for music he illegally downloaded and shared online, but at least the Boston University graduate student is getting help with his legal expenses.

In the five days since a US district court jury ordered Tenenbaum to pay damages to the record labels for illegally sharing 30 songs, nearly 100 people have donated a total of more than $2,000, according to Debbie Rosenbaum, a fourth-year student at Harvard's law and business schools who assisted in Tenenbaum's defense.

``What makes [it] particularly remarkable is that they're coming in at average donations of 10 to 20 dollars,'' she said. People are making the donations through Tenenbaum's legal defense website, joelfightsback.com.

Rosenbaum said the donations will pay for legal expenses incurred by the team led by Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson, who represented Tenenbaum for free. None of the donations will pay the award, which the defense team intends to appeal.

After a weeklong trial, the jury Friday decided that Tenenbaum, who is from Providence, infringed on the copyrights of the 30 tunes.

A list of the songs on court documents shows that as a music fan, Tenenbaum's tastes ran from grunge (Nirvana's ``Come As You Are''') to rap metal (Rage Against the Machine's "Guerrilla Radio") to older sounds like Aerosmith ("Janie's Got a Gun"). For good measure, he also downloaded some vintage punk -- the Ramone's "The KKK Took My Baby Away.'' Click here to see a photo slide show on the purloined play list.