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RIAA Says LimeWire Owes $1.5 Trillion
An anonymous reader writes "LimeWire owes the major record labels one point five trillion dollars, at a conservative estimate. At least, that's what an RIAA lawyer says. He also wants LimeWire shut down and its assets frozen, says Ray Beckerman's Recording Industry vs The People blog."
Many of the claims by the record labels are bupkis. It seems to be their business model. Instead of changing and embracing digital tech, they fear it, call it blasphemes, and sue the pants off of dead people et al. If I knew anyone personally who had been sued I'd jump o the piracy bandwagon to, I could not support and industry that will forcefully try to remove money from the people its suppose to cater to. 1.5 T is ridiculous. (I wonder how many sales have been generated by downloaders liking an artist and buying the latest CD?)
Scott
This ridiculousness needed to be stopped at its source. Artists should have stopped signing on with the RIAA at least a decade ago. They are not needed. Even as a hobby, these days, you can afford to self-produce with your own studio, if you are so inclined.
No artists == no product == no RIAA.
Since when is 750% markup on punishment not cruel or unusual? That is like saying I steal a car, now I owe $15 million to the person I stole it to. True, there are criminal charges with stealing a car, but there would be civil ones as well.
That value seems out of range, considering that you could finance two wars, clean up the BP spill and probably have enough left over to coat New Orleans in gold leaf...
In most scientific pursuits, getting a value that far out of range would lead a person to conclude that some of their underlying assumptions are invalid and cause them to form a more realistic hypothesis.
Apparently, in the riaa's world it means that they will develop superpowers and start traveling past the speed of light.
freaking morons
Wherever You Go, There You Are
My interpretation of the headline:
"RIAA declares LimeWire saved the economy from spending $1.5 Trillion on shitty music it didn't really need, and at least $1.4 Trillion of which wasn't worth listening to a second time anyway"
When the numbers you throw around are significantly larger than your industry's profits from the better part of a century, and start to close in on a fraction of the GDP, you sure make it easy to poke fun at you. Do they really think anyone is going to, for even a second, believe that they would have made $1.5 trillion dollars had it not been for one crappy P2P tool? OMGLOL
What should be considered is, if filesharing were not around, at ALL, would their losses equal $1.5 trillion. Do their lawyers understand what a trillion is? I wonder if, in the entire history of the music industry, if they have taken in that much.
TFA: $1.5T; 200m downloads @ $750 per
That's not how copyright statutory damages work. It's per work infringed not number of times the work was infringed. You would have to cite that you owned 200,000,000 (or at the very least 600,600) works and that all of them were copied illegally by the proposed system to get that far. Even then it's pretty remote for vicarious/inducement liability. Copyright has statutory damages due to the general rules against presuming damages. Statutory damages are your option if you wish to not prove the exact damages. I wouldn't be surprised if Limewire made a Rule 11 (b) motion to sanction this pleading. It's REALLY POOR. The UPPER limit of the presumable damages for this action are the 30 songs named in the complaint times the ~$250k in statutory damages available. That's ~$7.5M.
It's not just the enormity of the demanded money, but how shamelessly they try to get EVERYTHING done in one go, flying under the radar. They want to have injection against Limewire, and EVERY "comparable system", which is defined as:
(i) any system or software that is substantially comparable to the LimeWire System and Software, including but not limited to FrostWire, Acquisition, BearFlix, Cabos, Gnucleus/GnucDNA, Gtk-gnutella, KCeasy, MP3 Rocket, Phex, Poisoned, Shareaza, Symella, BitTorrent, uTorrent, Vuze/Azureus, BitComet, Transmission, Deluge, BitLord, KTorrent, eDonkey, eMule, aMule, MLDonkey, xMule, Ares Galaxy, MP2P, Manolito, isoHunt, or Piratebay, as those systems or software existed before or as of the date of this Permanent Injunction;
I mean, come on! I'm lost for words...
The curious thing about all of this is that the general sentiment is:
Civil Suit vs. BP = We Need Punatives!!
Civil Suit vs. individual pirates = Punatives are unfair!!!
If Limewire is smart, they will not try to argue this amount down. they should keep letting the lawyers demand 1.5 trillion. It will help shine light on how excessive and non-realistic the penalties are.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Civil Suit vs. BP = We Need Punatives!!
Civil Suit vs. individual pirates = Punatives are unfair!!!"
Hmm, well, lessee...how many peoples' lives ruined, wildlife killed, physical devastation, economic repercussions for decades, destruction of fully 1/3 of the seafood supply for the US, and generations of a way of life have the "music pirates' caused with downloading songs?
I think it is more of a "let the punishment fit the crime" type thing...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
While we are talking about putting that value in perspective, 1.5 trillion is just over 10% of the US GDP in 2008.
The idea that Limewire somehow owes damages equivalent to 1/10th of an entire year's output of the economy of the United States boggles the mind.
To put that number in context: There are currently 8 countries on Earth with a GDP higher than that.
The RIAA claims that if it wasn't for those meddling Limewire, they'd made more money than the entire population and industry of Canada in a year.