LimeWire just doesn’t want to die; it’s digging in against the pressure to settle with the RIAA and is refusing to join the likes of Grokster, Kazaa, iMesh, Bearshare and MetaMachine (eDonkey) in the ‘where are they now?’ department of P2P file-sharing. Those that have caved in so far have agreed compensation – to the tune of $200+ million in settlements. Joining them would be very painful for LimeWire.
The RIAA sued the Lime Group for $150,000 for each of the songs downloaded using LimeWire. CEO Mark Gorton and Greg Bildson (Chief Technology Officer) felt that the action was taken as “one part of a much larger modern conspiracy to destroy all innovation that content owners cannot control and that disrupts their historical business models”. LimeWire counter-sued the RIAA for anti-trust violations and consumer fraud.
This Tuesday, in a discussion between Digital Music News and the RIAA, some details of the drawn-out legal process with adversary LimeWire were revealed.
According to a source, LimeWire CEO Mark Gorton had anticipated the inevitable legal clash and has been preparing for it for years. With a nod towards the Kazaa case, its claimed there is no paper trail that would show LimeWire is guilty of inducement as laid out in the relevant section of the Grokster decision, detailed below.
“..one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties”
Jonathan Lamy representing the RIAA said “They respond. We respond. They respond, etc. Then discovery. These things take a long time”.
They sure do.
