No pun intended, but this is a bitter end to probably the second most famous, and certainly one of the longest running file sharing and hosting court proceedings ever, after The Pirate Bay trial.
Limewire submitted to the cruelty and persecution of the court’s ruthless charter of no-mercy-for-hosting-sites in late 2010, a precedent that completely ignores that the actual perpetrators of copyright fraud are the uploaders themselves, not the place the music or video is uploaded.
The RIAA opted to take the lazy way out, and, instead of finding and punishing the real perpetrators of infringement, chose to sue Limewire for the sum of $75 Trillion, a sum of money greater than the worth of the entire world economy. This figure was reached after 11,000 tracks were tagged as copyrighted, and the worth of each individual track multiplied by the download figure.
The King of Scumbags, in this author’s humble opinion, RIAA CEO Mitch Bainwol received $105 million from Limewire, a humble start-up company which now will be financially crippled due to the irresponsible actions of its user base. The King took the opportunity to gloat at how easily he lined his pockets, saying;
“We are pleased to have reached a large monetary settlement. Designing and operating services to profit from the theft of the world’s greatest music comes with a stiff price. The resolution of this case is another milestone in the continuing evolution of online music to a legitimate marketplace that appropriately rewards creators.”
While the RIAA and the god-awful pop music fat cats sit on their ‘lawfully’ accrued money pile and laugh, laugh, laugh, LimeWire’s people are just glad that it’s all over.
In a statement, lawyers for the embattled company stated, “LimeWire and its founder, Mark Gorton, are pleased that this case has concluded.”
If you think that this ruling was unfair, that music artists can’t count money not earned as part of their losses, that music should be free and that nobody should be sued for such a great amount out of no fault of their own AGAIN… then check this out here, and get stuck in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Payback
It’s for a good cause… the RIAA stands for Lady Gaga after all… you wouldn’t want her to get any more money, would you?