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Judge limits Limewire's damages to record companies
ONCE POPULAR filesharing network Limewire has finally managed to catch a break in its fight against the music industry, winning a decision to limit any potential damages that might be awarded against it.
Record companies, including Atlantic, BMG Music, Sony BMG, Virgin and Warner Brothers are suing Limewire's parent company, Lime Group LLC, alleging copyright infringement through the sharing of recordings over Limewire. The record companies had been hoping to extract 'trillions' of dollars in damages from Lime Group and its founder, Mark Gorton.
Fortunately sanity prevailed, with US District Judge Kimba Wood ruling that the record companies deserve one award per work infringed. Previously the record companies had been gunning for one award for every time an individual Limewire user had infringed their copyrights. Judge Wood said of the claim, "Plaintiffs are suggesting an award that is more money than the entire music recording industry has made since Edison's invention of the phonograph in 1877," adding that it would be an "absurd result".
Instead Judge Wood's ruling limits the potential statutory damages faced by Lime Group LLC to somewhere between $7.5 million and $1.5 billion based on $750 to $150,000 damages on around 10,000 post-1972 recordings that had allegedly been illegaly shared through the network. The record labels will also be entitled to actual damages for alleged infringement of around 1,000 pre-1972 worksm too.
Lime Group LLC recently settled a lawsuit with more than 30 music publishers, who own the copyrights to the songs involved. The lawsuits brought by music publishers and record companies went to court after Judge Wood ruled that Limewire had wrongly assisted users in sharing digital recordings, which led to Limewire shuttering its operations.
While Judge Wood imposed limits on damages, the actual figure has yet to be decided, with the trial scheduled to begin on 2 May. µ
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Less of the next suit will go to the Artists. In the U.S., the Publishers represent the Artists/Songwriters in the copyright of the actual music whereas, the record label owns the copyright to a particular recording of a song. So, whereas, the studio recorded CD/Album recording of a song belongs to the record label.
So, if you were using a song for a low budget film you are making, and you want to use the version off the band's CD, you need their permission, which you can obtain through the Publisher and the permission of the Record Label. Usually, this permission is given, in exchange for cash. If, on the other hand, you hired your nephews band to perform the song and record it, you would need the permission of your nephew's band to use their recording, which would be subject to their terms, plus, of course, you'd still need to obtain the rights of the songwriters, which may be the band who originally performed it. So, the Publishers already got a whack at Limewire for the infringing of the Artists/Songwriters copyright without their permission, and now it's the record labels' turn... any amount of money rewarded, I'd assume, would be subject to whatever % of sales agreement may exist between particular Artists/Songwriters and the record label with who they have <signed established an agreement.
In reality, under law Limewire can be charged $10,000 for each and every download or distributed copy. If the judge has limited the cost per title to only $150,000 then Liewire is getting off easy.
Personally, I stopped listening to the radio and stopped buying CDs as a rule more than a decade ago, possibly as much as 2 decades. I find out about new (to me) artists by borrowing CDs from friends, or by downloading free tracks from Amazon, archive.org, or several other outlets for lesser-known artists.
Amazingly, the RIAA works very hard to avoid paying artists for *anything* and most of them depend on box office receipts from live performances.
So, while I don't "steal" music, I don't fault who prefer to get the tracks for free, since the artists generally get f*ck all from CD sales anyway.
And people like you get right up my nose, and nearly motivate me to put my entire 21,000-track music collection online. Nearly. The bandwidth costs would be prohibitive, however.
Yeah I'll bet people always download lots of music from artists they never heard of. Duh...
Pirates steal whatever they can and should be punished for same just like facilitators of piracy.
I wonder how much of the money is going to go to the artists that were supposedly violated by people hearing their music who wouldn't even know they existed if it weren't for Limewire.