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LimeWire Settles For $105 Million
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."
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.
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.