RIAA Sues LimeWire Over Music Piracy
Saturday, August 05, 2006
Lime Group, the company behind the popular file sharing program, LimeWire, was sued by the RIAA in federal court on Friday, which accused the New York-based company of facilitating the trade of illegal music files between its users. Record labels are seeking damages, as well as $150,000 fine for every occurrence of an illegally-traded file (Man, that'll add up quick!). The RIAA claims that LimeWire's success is the result of making profits off of illegally-traded songs, noting that the company even encourages users to pirate music.Many have said that LimeWire had its chance to come clean go legal. It was one of the several P2P services that received a letter last September threatening legal action if it didn't shut down or change to a licensed business model. Many other services, including BearShare and WinMX, exited the business. Although I haven't been a fan of many of the recent lawsuits pursued by the RIAA, such as the lawsuit against an older women accusing her of downloading music illegally (Even though she didn't even have an Internet connection), I applaud their motivation to take down many of these P2P services that continue to exist and cheat many out of download music legally.
Comments
They'll never succeed in getting rid of all P2Pprograms/networks. They will always exist. Information is power. Thanks to P2P, information is free.
If sharing music over the internet is illegal now, imagine what they'll do offline. They'll probably make lending your mates a CD illegal too.
'Services' like iTunes and Napster are the disgrace.
By 
Skipper, at
8/05/2006 11:50:00 AM
Applaud? I applaud the people who oppose the corrupt and greedy profit-seeking music industry.
By 
Siddhartha Gandhi, at
8/05/2006 01:24:00 PM
@ Skipper: You're correct when you state that P2P networks will never die - There will always be someone trying to share files. However, sharing CDs with your friends is illegal (Ripping them onto your computer, then burning them onto a CD, and then giving them away to your friends). But, I think that services such as iTunes and Napster have taken the right step by offering songs inexpensively (I hate the DRM though :-).
By Alex Morganis, at
8/05/2006 01:30:00 PM
I had to download a song last night because it wasn't available on iTunes - I searched for 45 minutes.
I've no problem with using Limewire when I have to.
By marie b., at
8/05/2006 10:05:00 PM
What does it matter if they shut down Limewire? Another P2P app will spring up in it's place.
By Jimzzor, at
8/05/2006 10:18:00 PM
@ Jimzzor: Very much so. There's still thousands of underground P2P networks that the RIAA has yet to take out.
