Limewire to pay $105 million in damages

Tuesday, 17 May 2011

Limewire has been ordered to pay damages for 105 million dollars after an ongoing lawsuit filed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The RIAA is a trade group representing a total of thirteen different record labels including, Arista, Atlantic, BMG Music, Capitol, Elektra, Interscope, Laface, Motown, Priority, Sony BMG, UMG, Virgin and Warner Brothers.

In a statement by the RIAA Chairman and CEO, Mitch Bainwol he expressed his happiness at the outcome of the case saying that it offered some recompense to the thousands of lost jobs and fewer opportunity's that were able to be offered as a result of the file sharing.

"We are pleased to have reached a large monetary settlement following the court's finding both LimeWire and its founder Mark Gorton personally liable for copyright infringement" - RIAA Chairman and CEO, Mitch Bainwol.

The settlement marks the end of the five year lawsuit in which the RIAA, the trade group representing the individual record companies had been seeking damages for 75 trillion dollars from Lime Group, the creators of the peer to peer file sharing network.

The original amount had been met by cries of outrage across all sectors with it being described as by the Manhattan Federal Judge Kimba Wood as "absurd" in a statement in which she also pointed out that it was "more money than the entire music recording industry has made since Edison's invention of the phonograph in 1877."

The case Initially brought about by the success of another landmark lawsuit in 2005 against file sharing service, Grokster. The outcome of which marked a precedent in which companies could be sued for copyright infringement if the distributed services designed to be used for that purpose, even if the devices could also be used lawfully.

Limewire was officially shut down in october last year when the court issued an injunction against the file sharing company as part of a ruling by the US Federal Judge Kimba Wood that the site knowingly overlooked massive infringement.

This weeks decision marks the final nail in the coffin for the last pre-bittorrent file sharing network. And the RIAA has announced that the settlement is a "reason for celebration by the entire music community, its fans and the legal services that play by the rules."