LimeWire Settles with Record Companies for Only $105 Million

[Formica Archonis]

According to Torrent Freak, none of the money is going to the artists. It's all going to fund "future anti-piracy efforts."

Like lawsuits! Gee, I bet the lawyer who thought of that got a raise.

That's a load of bull, IMO...Supposedly they were suing LimeWire to defend the artists.

Yeah, that's what more restrictive intellectual property laws are for, too. But wouldn't it be horrible if poor Walt Disney's family were starving on the streets, like they will be if Steamboat Willie goes out of copyright?

IP trolls and IP holders don't care about the artists. They never have, they never will. Musicians sell a million albums and somehow end up owing the label money [http://www.salon.com/technology/feature/2000/06/14/love]. A company's executives can copyright something they had made as a work-for-hire, so the artist has no right to his own creative output. And yet, it's "the artist they're protecting" when they sue someone for uploading a hit MP3 that the artist (or his estate, if he's dead) didn't see a penny of profit from.

Can someone explain me how companies can calculate the money they didn't receive?

Step 1: Smoke a lot of opium.
Step 2: Pick a really big number.
Step 3: Pile bullshit on that number until you think you can get away with it.
Step 4: Get Botox injections if you can't say the number with a straight face. Write off as a business expense.

 

[neurohazzard]

*sigh* Silly record industry, you can't kill peer to peer. It's like a hydra, for every head you cut off, 2 more spring up in it's place. Killing limewire just leaves room for clones to move in and take it's place.

 

[Togusa09]

Interesting to note that the US national defficit is only 14 Trillion (http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/)

So that'd mean without piracy, the US would be in golde age of properity, without debt and everyone living in a land of peace and happiness...

How far up someones arse do you have to reach to get a number like 75 Trillion? It'd have to be a damn whale...

 

[Melon Hunter]

The RIAA never really have cottoned on to the fact that not everyone steals music, have they? I see lots of resent for the draconian DRM that has been placed on PC games, but the 'anti-piracy' measures that have been bandied about in the music industry by the RIAA makes the Assassin's Creed 2 DRM look like Ubisoft stuck a note on the box art saying 'Please don't pirate this game' and left it at that. They once sued a company called Diamond that made a portable MP3 player way back in 1999. The RIAA lost the case in the Supreme Court after it turned out their argument was basically "Well, it has a hard drive, and can download music from a computer! Obviously it's been made to steal music!" Observe also the prosecution flailing around in the Pirate Bay case from a couple of years ago trying to come up with a definition of what the site did and why it was illegal. They really had no idea.

 

[Swarmcrow]

Record companies demanded $75 trillion in damages?

Are they fucking high?

yes,, yes they are

 

[Sightless Wisdom]

I find it odd that the Escapist reports on Piracy, but any posts "including" piracy are worthy of warning or probation.

That aside and putting myself at slight risk, I'm glad they got past their absurd 75 trillion dollar request, but I would rather see Gorton win. The money he gets fined is not going to artists. In addition less people are going to be finding new music, maybe this doesn't seem like an issue to most but the thing is, when Gorton loses only the industry profits. Pirates lose, and artists lose. Whereas when Gorton wins, at least people who can't afford music or otherwise wouldn't pay for music have the ability to appreciate some artistic content.

 

[dochmbi]

Theres a total of about 8 trillion US dollars in the world, so to get 75 trillion I guess they'd have to wait for a few thousand years until hundreds of planets had been colonized and that much value even existed in the world.

 

[ReiverCorrupter]

Trillions? Bullshit. But we've known the amounts these organizations are suing for have been bullshit for over a decade. And it's all one way. Sony and other users of DRM never get sued for $10,000 per track that customers buy and then are blocked from using. Microsoft never got sued for $200,000 for every person who lost $200+ to a faulty xbox 360. If these companies are going to financially ruin the individuals who screw them, I say we should be allowed to financially ruin them right back when they screw us.

What, are you some sort of commie that believes that consumers have rights? Businesses are the good, honest, hardworking people of this God given nation. Pft. Next you'll be telling me that these parasitic 'firemen' deserve health care, and those leeches 'teaching' in our public schools deserve bargaining rights. Praise Jesus! Wealth is a sign of God's grace, so screw the sinners!

 

[weirdee]

This is sad. That guy that caused the loss of millions in revenue for the artists, will still be able to live a rich man after all this. I hate humanity.

Yeah, screw that limewire guy. He sure treated artists like garbage when he gave them all free worldwide exposure! I bet not a single person bothered to go out and buy any merchandise related to those musicians after they found out about music that they would have never otherwise bothered to listen to in the first place, or became lifelong fans. Gorton's going to continue living his life with all that undeserved money that he made from limewire, a for profit venture which has given him every cent he owns, not counting all the other money he makes from his free ventures such as the hedge fund. We know exactly how much money that is down to non-fabricated, itemized lists of every single way he's violated their rights conveniently expressed in monetary terms, and let's just say that he could probably buy a planet alone with the money he made from kicking puppies into furnaces, a well publicized feature of limewire.

He's not at all like those cool record label guys. After this lengthy, half decade long conflict that ultimately resulted in a lawsuit years after it mattered, they're going to spend every penny they got from limewire towards compensating all the damages incurred to those artists, of which they've never made ludicrous profits off of without at least giving the artists a fair share and full control of the rights to their music. Rights that limewire abused, and not anybody else at all.

 

[OmniscientOstrich]

Used to use Limewire a few years back, it was all round pretty fucking slow, inconsistent and the ***** gave me viruses. Nowadays, I haven't found an album that I couldn't just stream on youtube before deciding what to purchase.

 

[CM156_v1legacy]

Record companies demanded $75 trillion in damages?

Are they fucking high?

Maybe they just want to help America pay of its national debt.

Orrrr, the more likely thing is yes, they are fucking high.

If they lost 75 Trillion, that is more than a hundred billion CDs. I highly doubt that they lost that much

 

[BeerTent]

This one is also bad news for me. Not that I've ever touched limewire or Napster, but less viruses out there, less work for me to clean them up, less money in the end.

That was Limewire's purpose, right? Where did the music discussion come from again?

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Then again, I'm happy to buy my $5 mp3 albums off of Amazon so perhaps the record companies and consumers have reached a happy equilibrium.

$5!?

Currency convertor claims I'm paying $11 for mp3 albums from amazon.co.uk...

OT: Surely there is a PR element to consider here...

 

[Kakashi on crack]

This kinda pisses me off... How is limewire any different than getting on youtube, looking up a song, and downloading said song for free via online downloading programs? The fact that you didn't have to use a downloading program?

*sigh* Record companies can just go in a pit and... Nevermind, I'll try to remain civil...

 

[Vault101]

Well Limewire sure ended on a sour note.

umm you forgot

*puts on sunglasses*

WWAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH

 

[AbstractStream]

Whoa, okay. $75 trillion is just waaay too much.
On a side note, ever since Limewire went down, I've been actually purchasing my music.

This is sad. That guy that caused the loss of millions in revenue for the artists, will still be able to live a rich man after all this. I hate humanity.

Yeah, screw that limewire guy. He sure treated artists like garbage when he gave them all free worldwide exposure! I bet not a single person bothered to go out and buy any merchandise related to those musicians after they found out about music that they would have never otherwise bothered to listen to in the first place, or became lifelong fans. Gorton's going to continue living his life with all that undeserved money that he made from limewire, a for profit venture which has given him every cent he owns, not counting all the other money he makes from his free ventures such as the hedge fund. We know exactly how much money that is down to non-fabricated, itemized lists of every single way he's violated their rights conveniently expressed in monetary terms, and let's just say that he could probably buy a planet alone with the money he made from kicking puppies into furnaces, a well publicized feature of limewire.

He's not at all like those cool record label guys. After this lengthy, half decade long conflict that ultimately resulted in a lawsuit years after it mattered, they're going to spend every penny they got from limewire towards compensating all the damages incurred to those artists, of which they've never made ludicrous profits off of without at least giving the artists a fair share and full control of the rights to their music. Rights that limewire abused, and not anybody else at all.

Haha, I see what you did there. I'd like a thumbs up button for your post.

 

[ZehGeek]

Could be worse, big record companies could enforce there IP protection like Dethklok's does.

 

[Swifteye]

Big deal; nobody uses LimeWire anyway. They use FrostWire.

Everytime I use that thing it barely works.

 

[WouldYouKindly]

Yeah, I don't worry about the RIAA since I don't listen to the mainstream. I always buy my music, provided it can be found. If it's not on itunes or amazon and I can't find a physical disc, I have been known to torrent, but usually it's only old stuff that went out of production years ago.