LimeWire Sued for $7.5 Trillion, Judge Denies
The music industry wants more from LimeWire than what the United States owes to Americans and other countries across the globe.
On May 11, 2010, the music industry won its battle against LimeWire LLC, as the court found that the company had induced multiple users of the LimeWire P2P file-sharing program to infringe the copyrights of Warner Bros Records, Sony Music Entertainment, Capitol Records and ten other labels. The litigation is now in the damage phase, with a trial on damages scheduled for May 2, 2011. The record companies are demanding damages ranging from $400 billion to an insane $7.5 trillion.
But in a 14-page opinion signed on March 10 (pdf), United States District Judge Kimba Wood labeled the record companies' damages request as "absurd" and contrary to copyright laws. Previously the plaintiffs argued that Section 504(c)(1) of the Copyright Act provided for damages for each instance of infringement where two or more parties were liable. Given that LimeWire had over 50 million users per month downloading millions of files a day, the resulting damages would be "staggering."
"As it stands now, Defendants face a damage award that 'could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars (if not over a billion dollars),'" the judge said. "Indeed, if one multiplies the maximum statutory damage award ($150,000) by approximately 10,000 post-1972 works, Defendants face a potential award of over a billion dollars in statutory damages alone. If plaintiffs were able to pursue a statutory damage theory predicated on the number of direct infringers per work, defendants' damages could reach into the trillions."
In essence, take the 50 million LimeWire users and multiply that number with the maximum statutory damage award of $150,000. The resulting number is the staggering $7.5 trillion USD. That would mean LimeWire would owe just over half of the national debt which now trickles over $14 trillion and is steadily climbing. "Absurd" is an ideal word for the music industry's demands based on those numbers.
"As defendants note, 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,'" Wood added. "The absurdity of this result is one of the factors that has motivated other courts to reject Plaintiffs' damages theory."
By the end of the court order, the judge declared that the thirteen record labels are entitled to a single statutory damage award from LimeWire per work infringed, regardless of how many individual users directly infringed that particular work.
"We were pleased that the judge followed both the law and the logic in reaching the conclusion that she did," said LimeWire attorney Joseph Baio of Willkie Farr & Gallagher in a statement to Law.com. "As the judge said in her opinion, when the copyright law was initiated, legislatures couldn't possibly conceive of what the world would become with the internet. As such, you couldn't use legislative history. Instead, the overarching issue is reasonableness in order to avoid absurd and possibly unconstitutional outcome."
In jest, Baio added that the total sum the record companies wanted from LimeWire would be better spent paying off the nation's debt and investing in healthcare.
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Those guys should be locked up in a mental institution if they thought that 75 trillion amount would ever fly.
They're not actually expecting to get that much money. They're simply grandstanding.
failed troll attempt?
Goodbye, Limewire.
To be fair, that income could be taxed at ~35%, or just over 25 Trillion USD. That kinda solves our debt problem...
What's happenning to our Lawers here in the US? Luckily we still have Judges that have good common senses.
For the simple fact they wanted $75T, the judge should award $1 in damages and no punitive damages at all.
In reference to the taxes, only punitive damages are taxable, but the attorneys in the case would get 30-40% of the damage award, and therefore be taxed at 35%.
Tom's should write a solid, objective and detailed story on the facts regarding "piracy" - what's legal, what's not - what is the fundamental argument on both sides. The issue now is just too emotional and too muddy, and it's time the entire issue is rationalized. I thought that piracy is actually, legally speaking, simply file sharing - am I wrong? And no, I'm not asking about right and wrong, I'm asking about the law and how it classifies and addresses it.
"400 billion, thats insane"
"no, lets add 75 trillion as the max. 400 doesn't look so insane now does it?"
How much did the Limewire guys actually make on that program, because one word would take care of them....
BANKRUPTCY
Record industry doesn't get squat....game over.
This is the key to the absurdity of the claim. The point of statutory damages is to recover losses where the actual value is not known (who knows how many of those pirated songs led to a loss on the part of the music industry). That is why its an arbitrary $150,000 per song, because someone somewhere thought that sounded like a reasonable fee. And even at that fee, 10,000 songs is 1.5 billion dollars (I doubt the record industry lost anywhere near this much as a result of limewire, but who knows).
To claim they are owed more money as a result of their loss then they've ever made in history should be criminal, and I'm glad the judge struck it down in this case.
Tom's should write a solid, objective and detailed story on the facts regarding "piracy" - what's legal, what's not - what is the fundamental argument on both sides. The issue now is just too emotional and too muddy, and it's time the entire issue is rationalized. I thought that piracy is actually, legally speaking, simply file sharing - am I wrong? And no, I'm not asking about right and wrong, I'm asking about the law and how it classifies and addresses it.
read the first page of any book printed in america.
i've researched alot of the copyright and patent laws on how to get a few of my ideas patented and copyrighted. having read about 1/2 the relevant material regarding both copy right and patents it's a night mare that could be simplified into about 3-5 paragraphs if all lawyers and judges were sent to the bottom of the ocean. i say i read half of it because most of it is irrelevant b.s. to make lawyers rich just from hourly charges alone. most of the legal system is that way.
If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?
Thomas Jefferson
Im pretty sure the heads of the entertainment industry and thier lawyers sit in boardrooms all day smoking crack. $75 Trillion for christ sake, do these guys operate some random number generator /facepalm
It all started with the cd, when the cd came out, there was a royalty for the cd players. On top of that the price jumped from about $4.99 to $8.99 per vinyl LP to $17.99 to 21.99 for cd's.
I bought a 5 disk cd player a cheap citizen brand it was i think $300, some other better brands were over $500. LP's had of course the cost of turntable maintenance and carbon fiber cleaning brushes that wore out, to run a turntable you had to buy a new cartridge or diamond needle about every 6 months, if it was belt drive sometimes but rare the belt would break, the turntable also had to be cleaned/oiled calibrated when you replaced the needle or cartridge. If you did not keep this up you can damage the LP's. In the end you spent about $30 to $100/year.
At the beginning the record companies tried to say the cd was more expensive but you saved cash because they were maintenance free. But $20 per cd was a bit steep.
A little while later the cd-rw's came out on computers with the 4x cdrw. It took 20 mins to copy a cd at 4x. At $20 per cd what do you think people did?
The record companies did this to themselves by being greedy. Also at $20 a cd there was no room for budget bands that used to start out with $4.99 albums. At $4.99 you were like "oh ok ill take a chance on them." So the emerging bar bands got pushed aside.
This was before the internet and limewire or napster.
I think basically they want to bankrupt limewire so the name can be bought out and used as a music sales site just like napster is today. The same thing happened with napster. It was bankrupted and bought out by the music companies.
correction: before higher speed internet, there was a slow dialup internet at the start.
Can't wait till the RIAA Disappears.
While this is laughable. The intent to generate buzz has been successful on the part of the plaintiffs.
Goodbye, Limewire.
There is a Lime Wire Pirate Version on the Torrents if you want it.
Nothing is ever gone from the internet!!
75 trillion dollars? That's it, just to see the look on the judge's face I'm going to sue my brother for a quadrillion dollars for breaking one of my toys when I was 6.
LimeWire should sue for 100 Trillion for wrongful damages.
This is the single most preposterous successful lawsuit. That's like suing car companies if you loved one was slain by a motor vehicle. People use products, regardless of the legality.
75 trillion dollars? That's it, just to see the look on the judge's face I'm going to sue my brother for a quadrillion dollars for breaking one of my toys when I was 6.
But if you take today's corporate thinking, you never owned those toys. You merely had the license to play with them. So technically you owe the toy industry money for violating their TOS because your brother played with those toys (and breaking them) without a license.
The music industry should be slapped with a stiff penalty for wasting the courts' time.
Things are getting out of hand.
It's like Austin Powers
"Ok then, we hold the world ransom for 100 Billion dollars!"
read the first page of any book printed in america.
Yeah, I hear you brother, but I think there are some pretty interesting variables to consider. Such as, international laws, do copyright laws actually address file sharing? Are the standards applicable? If this was as black-and-white as the lawyers try to make it out to be with their scare tactics, then wouldn't there be a lawsuit at every single turn. all the time? It always seems to me that they're trying to hold onto loopholes, that the politicians are trying to figure out how to address this issue - doesn't that indicate that there's no clear cut resolution to this issue. I still think that if Tom's wrote on this, a smart but easy to understand story, it would be a very popular read indeed.
Apparently, they don't bother with the fact that at least a couple million users are also Canadian or in Canada... where it's 100% legal to download music and movies for free (for personal, non profit use)
I know record labels are protected by laws but who is protecting us from record labels?
Well, at least some rational judges.
If "anyone" had to pay for every track or video or movie would "anyone" ever spent as much as he/she downloaded. This is a hypothesis that big companies "use" to their side to produce those amazing numbers. And this is only for Limewire but how about for the total amount in the whole planet. (Absurd x absurd).
In my personal experience I always preferred very high quality engineering or expertise and that was very limited on services like Limewire. So anyway I replaced those junky files with legal purchases on Amazon and iTunes. At least the ones I really care, so I owe very little or nothing to anyone. But I can only speak for myself.
I like the convenience of internet and now I use iTunes and Amazon, but I am starting to miss video stores and record stores everywhere. I miss the pleasing experience to have the quality objects in my hand and I want somehow something back. Perhaps an interactive universal application on full screen I could play on many devices with plenty information will be enough. Not necesserly iTunes and probably something very specialized and sustainable.
This is the single most preposterous successful lawsuit. That's like suing car companies if you loved one was slain by a motor vehicle. People use products, regardless of the legality.
Lets take it a step further. Lets say I just bought a pickup truck, an F150 if you will, and I'm transporting pirated copies of CD's. That's the only reason i purchased that truck. The truck itself has 100's of legit, legal uses, but I'm only using it to sell pirated CD's. Using this logic, Ford is responsible for my piracy....
I say use all the money they spent on legal fees and find some real talent. When you have artists like Ke$ha and Justin Beiber, I'm surprised anybody is downloading at all. You'd have to pay ME $75 trillion to want to hear any of that garbage.
I should sue them for a few billion for boggling my mind on how they think they should get that sum.
On a rather bizarre and slightly related note regarding djsting's comment, Ford tried to sue Ferrari for the use of the F150 name in case people become confused (F150 because it's Italy's 150th year of unification). Ford's being F-150 and Ferrari's F150. Now, one is a Formula One single seat racer, the other a pickup. Who will get those confused?
LOL!