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LimeWire Settles Copyright Infringement Case

Posted by timothy on from the ok-ok-uncle dept.

An anonymous reader writes "LimeWire LLC has settled the copyright infringement case brought against them by the National Music Publishers Association. The music publishers, which include Sony and Warner Music Group, sued LimeWire for copyright infringement last June. However, today all claims brought against LimeWire LLC and Chief Executive Mark Gorton were dismissed following a filing in a New York federal court. LimeWire have so far made no comments in relation to the settlement and the figure was not disclosed, but it is understood that each side will pay its own costs incurred including attorneys' fees. The music publisher's are (as always) pleased with the outcome and said 'We are pleased this litigation is over... the parties worked hard to achieve a settlement that is a good result for all involved.' LimeWire will fight on as the case brought against them by 13 record companies is due on May 2."

47 comments

  1. Why not sue everyone else? by MrEricSir · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Cisco, Broadcom, Intel... hell even Darpa! Without the internet, piracy would be less of a problem. Sue everyone.

    --
    There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
    1. Re:Why not sue everyone else? by Troll-Under-D'Bridge · · Score: 2

      Without "piracy" and the other gray stuff (hint: also begins with a "p"), the Internet would be a far less interesting place. (I hate the "p" word when used for unlicensed digital duplication. Real piracy is something far more terrible than losing one's copy monopoly.)

    2. Re:Why not sue everyone else? by Moryath · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Well, there's always the parable of the loaves and the fishes.

      We could call it "Jesusing" or "Jesusery" instead of "Piracy."

      If nothing else, it'd get the fundie xtians' panties in a wad.

    3. Re:Why not sue everyone else? by blair1q · · Score: 1

      Wait. Do you have ears?

      Get in the lawsuit.

    4. Re:Why not sue everyone else? by kitsunewarlock · · Score: 1

      Why not sue everyone whose ever got the song stuck in their head? I mean, its the rights of the artist to recreate the emotive responses you have to their work. Its only fair.

      --
      Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
    5. Re:Why not sue everyone else? by antdude · · Score: 2

      Al Gore too. J/K. ;)

      --
      Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
    6. Re:Why not sue everyone else? by mcneely.mike · · Score: 0

      Oh man... i was singing 'the cave' by mumford and sons today. Don't sue ME!

      --
      soylentnews.org Go there to enjoy the people!
    7. Re:Why not sue everyone else? by davester666 · · Score: 1

      They would if they could.

      Any bets that every penny of the settlement not going to the lawyers is divvied up between the labels and applied directly to their coke and whore budget, with exactly $0 going to all their oh-so-important artists?

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    8. Re:Why not sue everyone else? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      sue Al Gore. he invented the internet.

    9. Re:Why not sue everyone else? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      It's even appropriate. If loaves and fishes could be copied freely, the economic damage would be terrible. How many people are employed in food production? It must be in the tens of millions, even if you exclude subsistance farmers. They would all be out of work. Everyone from the farmers to the factory workers to the truck drivers. Then the knockon effects as advertising and retail suffer would worsen it even further.

    10. Re:Why not sue everyone else? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Calling it Jesusing is probably not the way to go, but it would be great if we the people of the internet could agree on an alternative term.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    11. Re:Why not sue everyone else? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, just like Food today, we can copy food freely, that is why there are no restaurants. People just make burgers, fries and steaks at home, right?. In other words cooked food economy is dead right?

      Why to people make these statements?. Why are humans so stupid?

    12. Re:Why not sue everyone else? by xOneca · · Score: 1

      Driving schools will quit soon, because cars will be driven by computers.

    13. Re:Why not sue everyone else? by xOneca · · Score: 1

      Why not just "copy" as we have always called it?

    14. Re:Why not sue everyone else? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      DON'T COPY THAT FLOPPY! "Copy" has its own negative connotations due to the efforts of the copyright lobby.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    15. Re:Why not sue everyone else? by Numbstruck · · Score: 1

      Never having to worry about starvation ever again outweighs the loss of jobs, at least in my mind.

      Taking this a step further, let's say we can freely copy housing as well. There goes my number 1 and number 3 largest monthly expenses: shelter and food. Take those expenses away, and I almost don't need a job anymore. That doesn't sound so bad to me...

    16. Re:Why not sue everyone else? by xOneca · · Score: 1

      Then, we should call it "learning?"

    17. Re:Why not sue everyone else? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      Because it isn't free. You can copy a plant, but it takes a long time to grow. You can also make those processed foods at home, but there is a cost of time. When you buy cooked food, you're paying for the convenience - the price is worth more to you than the time it would take to prepare it yourself.

    18. Re:Why not sue everyone else? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      At least until you run out of land because everyone has built a small mansion and a solar field. But no matter: your handy replicator can always produce weapons instead to defend yourself from the people who want your precious sunlight.

      I'm sure there is a dystopian science-fiction novel in this concept somewhere. Replication renders all resources plentiful but energy, causing the collapse of governments - and in their place rise feudal societies in a constant struggle for land.

    19. Re:Why not sue everyone else? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      I like it conceptually, but I don't think it could be separated from larnin' you somethin'.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    20. Re:Why not sue everyone else? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you can replicate anything but energy, you could literally replicate your way to a Dyson Sphere(or Ringworld), and therefor have as much energy as you want. Or even just build large solar panels, replicate the stuff in space, and bring it down as needed. :P

  2. Hard to believe... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    That with all their money and supposed talent... The music industry can't PAY someone to give them a clue.

    Altho to be fair that would be a tough job in this case... The music industry seems to be willfully stupid.

    1. Re:Hard to believe... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Its hard to listen when you have your fingers in your ears and all you hear is a little voice saying "Why have millions when you can have billions".

    2. Re:Hard to believe... by Dan541 · · Score: 0

      No the industry is smart. There is allot of money to be made in litigation.

      --
      An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
  3. Money by Dan+East · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Where do outfits like this get their cash? Did they really sell many copies of Limewire Pro? Their potential customer base is people that don't want to pay for music, so I wouldn't think they would be all that inclined to buy software either (especially when the free version works just fine).

    --
    Better known as 318230.
    1. Re:Money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Limewire was really a pet project run by a guy who has a hedgefund and a stock trading company, i doubt cashflow was ever a worry.
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Gorton

    2. Re:Money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Gorton

    3. Re:Money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Google mark gorton tower research capital. I'd say that's where his money came from. The lime empire is pretty big and no doubt why the record companies have fought so hard. If they can't make good music they might as well get money from people who make money.

    4. Re:Money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Not only the free version worked fine but the stuff was free software, too. Many forks existed and still exist -- not to mention LimeWire Pirate Edition. Basically, they made money practicing what they preach -- the mafiaa should have tried to learn from them instead of trying to kill them but hey...

      And yeah, I had paid for the PRO version. I didn't have to, I could have grabbed a pirated version (or get stuff done with other Gnutella servents, I really like gtk-gnutella) but I just liked the idea of supporting the upstream open source project. Make a good product, don't sue your users, don't consider them as morons and criminals and guess what? They pay if they like your stuff.

      You probably guessed it already, I'm still seeding on Gnutella. And no, I'm not about to start paying for mafiaa's music.

    5. Re:Money by Kjella · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Not all are too bright and the ads were pretty deceptive. I do remember reading an interview with some soccer mom that had so barely caught that this free downloading thing was illegal, so she had bought the kids Limewire Pro (or maybe one of the others, my details are vague) and thought that this was for pay, so this is legal and all that. Of course she'd gotten some copyright nastygram and was very upset and all that, couldn't understand how they were allowed to sell such a thing etc. so yes they made some sales. Funny how 30$ doesn't buy you a license to all the music and whatnot in the world, eh? Never underestimate the gullibility of many people, they might not be Nigerian scam victim-class but pretty bad anyway. The kind you see on rent-a-coder who think they'll get an iTunes clone for 200$ and such.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    6. Re:Money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I always had to laugh when people downloaded the free version, and would then use that to download a copy of the pro version that people were sharing.

    7. Re:Money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The notion that the customer base is not willing or able to pay is false. Tehparadox receives frequent 'donations' amounting to 1.5k a pop and climbing. For the last two years I've 'donated' more towards running that site and various download service accounts than I have on buying legit content.

      What I won't do is buy overpriced DRM'd music, fund developers who think installing rootkits is acceptable, wait for content to be released in my 'region', put up with 'you must be online and can only run this from one machine at a time' shit, get ebooks in obscure formats that I can't open on my psp, and miss out on content that my government thinks I shouldn't have.

    8. Re:Money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      LimeWire Basic and LimeWire Pro were both built from the same open source codebase, but Pro had a few constants changed. For example, it would connect to 5 ultrapeers instead of 3, which meant you would get roughly 5/3 times as many search results in a given period of time. It would also connect to more peers in each download swarm, which meant your downloads would be faster. People who used LimeWire a lot and didn't want (or know how) to build it from source were by no means crazy if they paid $20 for those features. In later versions, Pro also included a built-in virus scanner. Again, not a crazy use of money for a regular LimeWire user. ;)

      FrostWire, LuckyWire and many other projects were based off the LimeWire codebase, which proves that people were free to build their own versions if they wanted to.

  4. You've read the fine article by Troll-Under-D'Bridge · · Score: 1, Informative

    .. if you've read the summary, that is. Looks like it's sourced from a P2P forum/social news site.

  5. Settle with what? by tsotha · · Score: 2

    What does LimeWire have to trade? The only thing I can come up with is user information, traffic logs - that kind of thing. I'm thinking if I were ever a LimeWire user I'd be a little nervous right now.

    1. Re:Settle with what? by compro01 · · Score: 1

      It's not what limewire has, it's what Lime Group has and that includes a hedge fund company (Tower Research Capital LLC), a medical software company (Lime Medical), and a stock brokerage (Lime Brokerage LLC).

      --
      upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
    2. Re:Settle with what? by maroberts · · Score: 1

      One would presume that Limewire was a separate company from the others and it can separately go bankrupt, It is difficult to pierce the corporate veil to drag the assets of parent companies into play. In other words, I'd be highly surprised if Lime Group was held liable for the actions of Limewire. Also see "Hollywood accounting" for how this works

      --

      Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
      Karma: Chameleon

  6. Reminded me of something I said before by KingAlanI · · Score: 1

    "Great! Let's advertise on ThePirateBay, a site whose users are often there because they can't or won't pay for stuff."

    --
    I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
  7. What a revolting development by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Limewire doesn't steal music, PEOPLE steal music...

  8. Thing I don't understand... by MikeRT · · Score: 1

    If I were representing the music industry, this is what I'd do...

    1) Go to Limewire and offer them $20M in cold hard cash, an iron-clad settlement for $0 and the ability to dissolve their business peacefully in exchange for them releasing a version of Limewire that contains code that actually tracks user transactions with audio and video files. Stuff like sending back to the RIAA a list of "Windows/Mac user johnqsmith from IP address A.B.C.D successfully sent file 01 - Top Hit.mp3"

    2) I'd even fund Limewire's defense and we'd do a big legal kabuki in front of the press making it look like Limewire was fighting the good fight.

    3) I'd shake hands with their CEO, publicly say that Limewire is forgiven and "oh, by the way, thanks for all of the **legally actionable information** on your users, nice doing business with you."

    1. Re:Thing I don't understand... by coolmadsi · · Score: 1

      1) Go to Limewire and offer them $20M in cold hard cash, an iron-clad settlement for $0 and the ability to dissolve their business peacefully in exchange for them releasing a version of Limewire that contains code that actually tracks user transactions with audio and video files. Stuff like sending back to the RIAA a list of "Windows/Mac user johnqsmith from IP address A.B.C.D successfully sent file 01 - Top Hit.mp3"

      I'm sure there would be (more if there are not already) people re-naming random files to "01 - Top Hit.mp3" even if they actually are "01 - CC Song.mp3" (or "Nasty Visus.mp3.exe")

  9. Pleased by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    > The music publisher's are (as always) pleased

    Pleased with everything except the editor's grammar.

  10. Business model by Internetuser1248 · · Score: 1

    I would like to retract comments I have made in the past about the mafiaa using a failed business model. I was watching a lawyer show when it dawned on me that these companies aren't the only ones who are trying to make more and more of their money from litigation. In the US there are a whole industry of companies and individuals whose whole income is based in litigation. While we can all agree that their old model, sell a cd for $30 and give 50c to the artist is failing, their new litigation model has the potential to be fairly successful. I will henceforth be complaining about the failed legal system in the US instead.

  11. Limewire virus delivery system by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So does that mean Limewire's 14 year old users (16 years old now, I guess) can start suing them for all the viruses and trojans they caught by using Limewire?

  12. Good read. by kennyall · · Score: 1

    Thats how big business works, one falls they take everyone down with them. Unfortunately Im partnered with sony but i dont think this will have too much of an effect. Interesting read to say the least, gives good insight to how things really go on behind the scenes.