Just what is it about the phrase get stuffed you don't understand?
|
|
|
Limewire tries to settle record label damages out of court
SHUTTERED FILESHARING NETWORK Limewire has held meetings with record label lawyers in the hope of reaching an out of court financial settlement.
Limewire was shut down at the end of 2010 as the firm was effectively demolished by a federal court ruling that outlawed the distribution of its client software in October 2010. With Limewire's operational fate sealed there was the trifling matter of damages to be awarded to the record companies.
Now the Wall Street Journal is reporting that representatives of Limewire have held at least three separate settlement conferences with lawyers representing several record labels in order to come up with a out of court settlement. If Limewire and the record labels cannot work out something among themselves then a jury will have to decide just how much cash Limewire will be ordered to fork over, if it can.
In a separate ruling, Limewire won something of a bittersweet battle against the record companies that limited any potential damages, albeit to something in the region of $7.5m to $1.5bn. Perhaps the record labels realised that a multi-billion dollar damages award would be merely symbolic, as it is highly unlikely Limewire that could cough up so much cash.
While the record companies might have succeeded in shutting down Limewire, by the time it went offline in 2010 numerous alternatives had popped up on the internet. With hundreds of Bittorrent trackers, Usenet servers and so-called 'digital locker' services having sprung up, shutting down Limewire is unlikely to have the devastating effect on filesharing that the record companies desire.
Limewire had claimed that it wanted to work with the record labels to offer legitimate downloads on its service. Even if that wasn't the case, if the record labels had been smart they would have realised that services like Limewire offer an excellent way of distributing music at low cost.
Instead, like the belligerent drunk led by a blind man, the oppressive MAFIAA recording labels prefer to wipe those they perceive to be their enemies off the map in the mistaken, short sighted assumption that doing so will enable them to continue to feed their greed. µ
Tags: Software
Share this:
Share
I'd be surprised on hearing how much of any money actually makes its way to the artists.
Something for the inq to investigate?
Facilitation of piracy is a crime and Limewire knew it when they were violating law. Now they must pay for their crimes like every other criminal.
Limewire was always a piece of crap and turned into an absolute guaranteed way to infect your PC with viruses and malware.
That's one less POS software out there causing problems.
Shutting down Limewire will do absolutely NOTHING to impact file sharing across the world. The cat is out of the bag gentlemen, there is NO way to put it back in. File sharing will only grow and will NEVER go away.
Get a clue assmonkeys and stop wasting the courts time, and give the artists some of the ridiculous amount of money you are spending on a useless effort.
Limewire was just one of many applications for the Gnutella file sharing network. Other applications like Frostwire and Bearshare still work. Shutting down Limewire was a complete waste of the music industry's time.
I don't know anyone who used limewire.
I tried it once many years ago and it was crap. I only use btjunkie now.
I find the RIAA to be the biggest scum of the earth, they claim downloading hurts artists, but with all these lawsuits, the artists aren't seeing a penny, so who's really stealing from artists.