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LimeWire Settles For $105 Million

Posted by Soulskill on from the pocket-change dept.

eldavojohn writes "LimeWire has settled its suit with the RIAA for $105 million. It's several orders of magnitude lower than the $1.5 trillion initially demanded by the RIAA, but it ends a nearly five-year legal battle. P2P networks take heed; the monster may start looking for other targets."

11 of 167 comments (clear)

  1. Does anybody actually buy music anymore? by improfane · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There is plenty of music that is free and legally free. Find small artists that release MP3s then buy an album from them if you like enough (Edgen). Use Spotify if you can.

    Buy second hand, RIAA gets nothing. I can live without new music. If you can't control your impulses, RIAA will never die. I'm waiting for the most recent Duran Duran album to get cheaper.

    --
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    1. Re:Does anybody actually buy music anymore? by Desler · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yes. Have you heard about this new service called "iTunes"? I hear Apple thinks it'll be successful in a few years.

    2. Re:Does anybody actually buy music anymore? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why should it be my mission on Earth to try and make the RIAA die?

      I like small artists and I buy directly from the ones I know, but sometimes I open my wallet for mainstream artists. Do you seriously imagine that even a statistically significant number of people care about the RIAA, much less will actually alter their behavior to try and destroy them?

      I'm no fan of the RIAA suing little old ladies and twelve-year-olds, but all the profess musicians I know are not OK with people getting their music for free and are quite comfortable having the RIAA or anyone else go after the people who are downloading it without paying for it. What they care about, and what I'm happy to oblige them on, is cutting out the increasingly unnecessary middlemen and providing a direct line of purchase to the artist.

      When I was in college and downloading music was new, I (and everybody I knew) did it. Then we grew up and got jobs (well, most of us got jobs) and realized that it was, in fact, getting something for nothing, and that no matter how many window/front door/car analogies you make, that is usually ripping somebody else off, even if you don't call it 'stealing.'

      The fruits of other people's labors has a price - whether or not you feel like paying it. But to answer your inane question, yes, just about everybody buys music these days.

    3. Re:Does anybody actually buy music anymore? by spikenerd · · Score: 3, Informative

      Downloaders are not the only ones "getting something for nothing". Content creators are granted rights far beyond those granted by nature to control copies of their works even after they distribute them. All of the laws and government-operated judicial system necessary to make this work are provided at the expense of tax-payers. In exchange for these expensive services, and for the people respecting their "rights", the content belongs to the public after a limited time ...except that those lyin' cheatin' thieves have stolen all the value from the rightful owners by lobbying to redefine "limited time" to extend so long that the public never gets anything worth value. Well, as a tax-paying citizen, I'm tired of being ripped off. I want all that content that rightfully belongs to the public domain! That's why we must fight the RIAA--they are exactly what they call us--pirates and thieves.

    4. Re:Does anybody actually buy music anymore? by Desler · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Lots of people care about the RIAA, want it gone, and refuse to buy music.

      And by "lots of people" you mean "lots of people in your niche group". How many average people in Best Buy who are buying CDs give a rats ass or even have likely ever heard of the RIAA?

    5. Re:Does anybody actually buy music anymore? by TheCouchPotatoFamine · · Score: 3, Informative

      That's BULLSHIT. You're hocking ring tones to children on locked down phones. THAT'S who you're cheering for. There is no damned reason a song deserves money when you get right down to it and it's draining money from things that would actually help the world:

      it's so easily duplicated,
      it's not a precious resource (there are decades of music, that the RIAA is obscuring)
      it's easily created from scratch

      You're saying some arbitrary imaginary dopamine rush needs to be protected with the same vigor as a piece of food that can actually feed and sustain life... oh wait, "stealing" music will get you MORE trouble then *actually* stealing food.

      pure ego, man, pure ego. GO TEAM FOSS.

      --
      CS majors know the time/space tradeoff, but they never get taught the 3rd, crucial, tradeoff of the set: comprehension!
  2. Question/Opinion I have about song value by Huntr · · Score: 5, Interesting
    According to TFA:

    Having facilitated the mass piracy of billions of songs

    So, the RIAA settled for $105 million after determining that Limewire helped people pirate "billions" of songs. Shouldn't that, then, set the value of "a" song that is shared? A conservative estimate of 2 billion songs for $105 mill is, what, about a nickel a song? Should use that value when determining damages against Jammie Thomas and anyone else.

    JM convoluted O, of course, but I'm not the one settling for relative peanuts.

  3. Re:If they can win hundred million buck settlement by MoonBuggy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm wondering where the hell Limewire got $100m in the first place? What part of their model made them that kind of money?

  4. Gorton, the Owner, Is Allegedly Worth More by eldavojohn · · Score: 4, Informative
    The owner is allegedly worth way more than that. From the article:

    During his damages hearing last week, RIAA lawyers suggested his net worth was larger than that. They noted he possessed $100 million in an IRA account. His Manhattan home is worth more than $4 million. In addition to Lime Wire, Gorton operates a hedge fund and a medical-software company. Gorton's lawyers claimed in court that he made little money from Lime Wire. Maybe, but records show the privately owned company generated $26 million in revenue in 2006 and sales climbed dramatically after that. During most of Lime Wire's 10-year history, Gorton was chairman, CEO, and only board member.

    Disclaimer: I'm the submitter so I'm probably the only person that read the article which gives me an unfair advantage.

    --
    My work here is dung.
  5. Re:If they can win hundred million buck settlement by Danny+Rathjens · · Score: 4, Informative
    The "criticism" section of the wikipedia article divulges some likely income streams they had. e.g. last year when they bundled the ask.com toolbar and

    Prior to April 2004, the free version of LimeWire was distributed with a bundled program called LimeShop (a variant of TopMoxie), which was spyware. Among other things, LimeShop monitored online purchases in order to redirect sales commissions to Lime Wire LLC. Uninstallation of LimeWire would not remove LimeShop.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limewire#Criticism

  6. A legal double standard by roadsider · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I acquired more music using Maxell cassette tapes than I ever did with any p2p software. In any given college dorm pre-internet era, you spent a good chunk of your available time taping floor-mate's records. After all, why else would you buy a 90 minute chromium oxide cassette if not to record two 43-minute LPs? On the equipment I used at the time, you couldn't tell the difference in quality, so why doesn't/didn't the RIAA go after Maxell, TDK, Memorex and the other manufacturers of high quality cassettes?

    Limewire didn't kill the music industry. The music industry killed the music industry.