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A group of music companies, including Sony BMG, Virgin Records and Warner Bros. Records, have accused Lime Wire and the company's officers of copyright infringement, according to a federal lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in New York. Lime Wire produces software that's often used to create copies of music recordings and then distribute them over the Web.
The recording industry is asking for compensatory and punitive damages, such as $150,000 for every song distributed without permission.
Lime Wire is "devoted essentially to the Internet piracy of plaintiffs' sound recordings," the record companies charge in their suit. "The scope of infringement caused by defendants is staggering."
The recording industry continues to pressure file-sharing companies that refuse to do one of two things: either adopt a business model that compensates record companies, or shut down.
Last week, the makers of the Kazaa file-sharing system agreed to pay the record industry $115 million and use a filtering technology to prevent users from distributing files that infringe on copyrights. Other companies that have either gone out of business or altered their business models are Grokster, WinMx and BearShare.
"Despite numerous efforts to engage Lime Wire, the site's corporate owners have shown insufficient interest in developing a legal business model," the Recording Industry Association of America said in a statement. "While other services have come productively to the table, Lime Wire has sat back and continued to reap profits on the backs of the music community. That is unfortunate and has left us no choice but to file a lawsuit to protect the rights and livelihoods of artists, songwriters and record label employees."
Lime Wire representatives could not be reached for comment.
See more CNET content tagged:
LimeWire, recording industry, business model, P2P, record company
Sure, someone could LIE, but then again, the test of Grokster (unlike what most people say!) was that you had to SAY that using your software for illegal actions was wrong, AND keep people from getting it if you knew they were going to use it for infringement.
LimeWire did this, so they are out of the eye of the Grokster ruling.
This is just a waste of time anyway, whenever they shut down one network (and they haven't even succeeded at that!), a new one just pops up somewhere else.
To the recording industy: STOP OVERCHARGING FOR YOUR MUSIC, especially online music!
Decrease your prices, put kiosks in stores where people can bring their own cd's or DVD's and burn them, and you will see more people buying your music.
The same really applies to game and software manufacturers as well, and to a lesser extent, movie makers.
and open source groups are precisely why I stopped buying
music from the music industry years ago. I was a 'big' source of
income for them with memberships in BMG, Columbia House,
etc. but that all stopped with their attacks. They next target(s)
will be the internet radios since, although a little cumbersome,
you can record music from your radio station and edit out what
you don't like/want and presto....you have your own copy free of
charge. If the music audience would put up a credible boycott of
the music industry for a prolonged period of time, it would be
brought to its knees and stop this nonsense....
And don't cry on my shoulder about how this takes food out of
the poor performing artists' mouths...that is a load of crap. The
recording industry companies are ripping the artists off not us,
and taking the foodout of the artists' mouth, not us. I.e., The
Righteous Brothers were broke when their career ended years
ago before the flap over copyright infringement by file sharing
ever came about, and it was their recording label company that
left them that way by ripping them off through their recording
contract...the artists didn't own the rights to their own songs.
Look at the Beatles....until recently Michael Jackson owned most
if not all of the rights to the Beatles songs, which he bought
from the recording industry labels who made all the money from
them...not the artists. So it is the music industry that is doing
the ripping off and is now crying/complaining that they are now
getting ripped off in turn......BooHooHoo!!!!!! Cry me a
river....poor babies. Fact of life....turn about is fair play.....and it
couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of swindlers. How
many millions of dollars profit is enough for these companies????
Their greed is only surpassed by their arrogance spiteful actions.
As for the artists, last time I looked, the amount of money they
made was hardly close to a poverty level....if they practiced some
sensible spending and informed investments strategies they
would have more than enough money for a lifetime....even at
their level of frivolous spending. They won't get much sympathy
from the millions of people who barely make above the
government's poverty level of income and see open source as a
means to obtain music that they would otherwise be unable to
afford to buy. The coporate greed and whining in this country
disgusts me.....but a smart alternative to fighting it is to buy you
music CD's used....that way the music industry doesn't make
anything off the subsequent sales after the initial new
sale....they make their money only once while resellers
contribute to the health of the economy and leave them out of
the loop. Whatever, just consider your next music purchase and
think about what you can do different that would deny the
bloated music industry its lion's share of the artists' work.
and the Beatles. They are soon to follow, then there will be no need
to resort to non commercial sources of music.
As a LONG time music purchaser and musician with disdain of
music industry's greed, I am extremely happy with Apple's 99 cent
per tune offering where you own them as well (regardless of how
new it is).
2) All airplane manufactures, because teorists use then for ilegal purposes.
3) And I could be going on for centuries...
Would this mean the flood gates have opened for law suits against other Peer-to-peer software developers such as BearShare?
Reminds me abit about what happened with ThePirateBay!!!
Everyone knows that many people use it exclusively for downloading movies and not music at all!
Case dismissed.
- by 1musicman1 October 9, 2008 7:20 PM PDT
- I sincerly hope that Limewire takes this case to court and forces all of the "big name" record companies to finally PROVE that downloading files caused them to lose any money at all. In the past the RIAA and these record companies have been crying "foul" because they are losing money because people are downloading music files...I say PROVE IT! These companies and the RIAA have been "scaring" file sharing companies to pay them money they don't deserve to get by threatening them with "cease and desist" letters along with financial ruin.
- Reply to this comment
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(31 Comments)See...here's how I know the RIAA is full of bull. Does anybody remember when cassettes came out? The record companies were scared that people would copy the cassettes and make illegal copies, thus cutting them into their profits. Did they lose money behing the advent of the cassette and the cassette recorder? No...they did not...even tho' if you look at the fine print on the early cassettes, they warned everybody and their mother that copying cassettes was illegal.
I say that the advent of the computer and the cd did NOT cause for the record companies to lose money thru illegal file sharing.
We can go to classrooms...and copy what is in schoolbooks and receive good grades from what we copied...but we cannot have a copy of a file that somebody brought and decided to share with other people online? Amazing....that I cannot share what I have brought with whomever I want to share it with...whether it be a cd....dvd...or whatever.
But getting back to what I originally said...I want the RIAA to prove that ANY of the record companies lost money thru the advent of the cassette recorder when cassettes were the media of choice...compared to cd's and dvd's now...and although the SALES of cd's may be down...it doesn't mean the sales are down due to illegal file sharing. The music industry as a whole SUCKS and it sucks because artists are being forced to have to put out 12-15 songs per cd instead of 7-10...that albums used to dictate. Also, people today have shorter attention spans...they want to know about their fave artists NOW...and they don't want a lot of "filler" material in the music they listen to, because they have other artist they want to check out too, or other things that they want to do.
Why doesn't the RIAA talk about the money that these record companies "invest" into these new "artists"...a lot of whom CAN'T "sing" without the use of AUTOTUNE, and are lip-synching a lot times to prerecorded tracks...the only thing they have going for them is their good looks?
I don's see the RIAA rushing to pay people back their money after they have paid good money to see these "artist" in concert, and their prerecorded tracks start skipping....lol.
To sum all of this up...I feel, the music industry has been in bad shape for quite some time...matter of fact...I can remember before Michael Jackson released "Thriller"...the state of the music industry as far as sales are concerned, was in the DUMPS...just as it is today...even though the media of choice was the cassette...and the RIAA wasn't suing anyone then, and they shouldn't be suing anyone now.
Limewire...Kaazaa...BearShare...Winmx....Napster....all of you guys should have gotten together when they first went after Napster...realizing they would be coming for the rest of you guys, later, and created a legal fund from which to defend yourselves.
We should be embracing the good things that we reap from new technology instead of worrying about overzealousness. The RIAA's goal seems to be to make all the file sharing apps "business model" apps...so that they can get more money.
In closing, I wish Limewire the best, make the RIAA prove they lost money during the advent of the cassette and the cd...I guarantee you, they have lost NOTHING.