RIAA Says LimeWire Owes it $72 Trillion

Originally posted by Crakeur
I thought they settled this.

I know that Limewire's lawyers crushed the label owners plan of attack when they showed the exec salaries and the layoffs that, presumably, were made to ensure those exec salaries went up or remained the same.

Limewire is no longer operating.

Honestly I thought it was too.

But, I think in this sour economy lawyers (and labels, and large corporation, etc) believe their only means to remain relevant and accountable to the shareholders is litigious means, so they re-open already settled claims, or fabricate new ones based upon settled claims. I get the feeling if they show they are actively fighting a battle in court, they can forestall having to actually BE accountable.

Pay? For music? Why would anyone do that? I can see paying to go to a concert, but songs are free. You just turn on the radio and there they are, for free. You turn on the tv and there they are, hundreds of channels of music, for free. You go on the internet and there they, every song ever played, for free.

Paying for music is like paying for air to breathe. Just a silly idea. Why would anyone think that is a good idea?

reply to post by Ookie


Presumably because, without that element in place (Intellectual Property), there is little motivation for some artists to consider it nothing but a hobby.

reply to post by Ookie


that raises a very good set of questions.

when I was a kid, and your favorite station started playing a new song, if you liked it, you would keep a cassette in the tape deck with the hopes that you'd catch the song and record it. (until, of course, the single was available at the local record store).

Wouldn't that mean that radio stations were the limewires of our youth?

and now, with the bulk of the file sharing services going away, people are stripping music from youtube videos so they can listen to them without paying for it.

Does that mean the record labels and the RIAA will go after youtube (google) next?

are they trying to say that they think MUSIC, is worth 72 trillion dollars???

these people....we need to get rid...of these people...

EARTH IS WORTH 500,000 TRILLION DOLLARS, I'M SUING YOU FOR BREATHING MY AIR, AND DRINKING MY WATER RIAA.

seriously stupid.

I was expecting an article from The Onion.
73T...trolls.

reply to post by Crakeur


Don't give them any ideas!

I doubt that the entire of the Music industry is worth $72 trillion globally. Sounds like a long shot they are going to get it, i mean its not like limwire has that kind of money just sitting about, unless of course limewire is just a front for the American treasury..... ohh wait they don’t have any money either.

I feel bad for the RIAA, and because of this, I will offer to pay the money that is owed to them by Limewire, because I used to use the service.

I will give them cash.

We will complete the transaction in Zimbabwe.

reply to post by Crakeur


I agree.

Like you, it was the same for me.

Cassette player loaded and waiting? Check.
Spent hours waiting for the ones you wanted to play? Check.
Eventually got what I wanted? Check.
Had a diverse array of freely obtained music? Check, you bet.

I believe that if the RIAA had the smallest share of the pie, and the artist the majority, Napster would still exist in it's earliest form. That, however, doesn't suggest I don't appreciate and understand the need for IP protection, but I do agree that music if its being PLAYED should be able to be obtained freely. I think where it is different is that one was random good luck on stumbling across your favorite tunes, where P2P, it can be argued, is a warehouse of available music.

As I like to break things down to their simplest forms, I tend to view it thusly: If I find a thousand dollas in the street and no one claims it, It's mine. If I go to a place (ie a bank) where I KNOW money is stored for the purpose of TAKING a thousand dollars, I am stealing. Given that scenario, I can see where a case could be made for IP violation and damages (not that I agree with them, but can see the logic).

For the same reason, I imagine that you, as controller likely would not want anyone to tell all their friends to create domains that SOUND like abovetopsecret, come here and replicate the functionality, use scrapers to break down the images/menus/content and continually share it with the world .... if they did, there would be no reason to come here

However, after that I still disagree with any litigation against any P2P network services as I consider it an infringement of MY own rights.... to communicate with anyone I choose to in the manner I choose to. After all, I have MANY different firearms, If I choose to break the law by shooting someone with them, then you can hardly blame the firearm for my stupidity....same with P2P, just because it CAN share music I dont believe it should be prosecuted for the users unwillingness to NOT share copyrighted material.

Like Jeff Goldblum said appropriately enough in Jurassic Park "Life will find a way", so too Music sharing will find a way.

reply to post by alphabetaone


I agree. If you listen to the interview with Rob that was done at the Gilliland Ranch, I do believe he says to "download his music off limewire, it's where he gets it" or something like that.

The record companies screw the artist at every turn and it's only the wildly successful that make enough to sustain themselves. I just read somewhere that ten years after their heyday, Dee Snider (lead singer from Twisted Sister) was broke. Billy Joel also talks about being broke, even though he was a huge success. That's a result of bad management and crappy deals courtesy the record label (yes, there's also the artist spending it faster than they earn it aspect).

I always found it funny that it was cool to make mix tapes and pass them around. Today, that gets you $150k a song in fines.

I think this takes "start high and meet in the middle" to a new high ! or low ?

reply to post by Crakeur


You are right Crakeur personally in my view i believe its time for RIAA to go away, honestly how can RIAA ask limewire for $72 Trillion? while there own boss are getting billions of billions dollars per year

It has no logic on that.

And wheres RIAA proof that on Limewire all the songs belong to them? cant they back that up with evidence?

Originally posted by Crakeur
reply to post by Ookie

 

that raises a very good set of questions.

when I was a kid, and your favorite station started playing a new song, if you liked it, you would keep a cassette in the tape deck with the hopes that you'd catch the song and record it. (until, of course, the single was available at the local record store).

Wouldn't that mean that radio stations were the limewires of our youth?

and now, with the bulk of the file sharing services going away, people are stripping music from youtube videos so they can listen to them without paying for it.

Does that mean the record labels and the RIAA will go after youtube (google) next?

Excellent analogy... I'm 34 and that was definitely stuff we did then! If you didn't have a blank tape, you could always put a piece of tape of the holes on the top a commercial tape you didn't like anymore

As for youtube.... isn't that what the SOPA/PIPA stuff was (is) all about? I mean, part of it anyway?

reply to post by Agent_USA_Supporter


they sued based on a certain number of downloads or albums that were downloaded so, yes, they actually can come up with a number.

They'd be thrilled if they got the same deal the labels got and, personally, I think they derserve more of the total settlement amount than the the labels but that would only be a result of the artists deserving the lion's share of the money.

I'm sure Limewire, and Mark if he's personally responsible for any of the settlement, would be more than happy to dole out the final amount to the the artists who created the music.

reply to post by Crakeur


I find it VERY humorous to be honest.

In fact, if the RIAA had a modicum of foresight, they would have seen the writing on the wall, and it did not take rocket science. People were sharing music for years, nothing suggested that it would halt simply because of the advent of the internet, in fact one could have hypothesized it would have been exacerbated *gasp* noooo.

If they instead, had the aforementioned foresight what they SHOULD have done from the start is create a RIAA "radio station". An internet based download service themselves that instead machine coded a plugin so each plugin was unique to the machine it was being run on. The plugin would allow you to obtain, play and burn all the songs that were being played to your hearts content,burn them to your own CD's, but not be playable on others machines.

This way, no IP violation, no lawsuits, P2P could be used for other activities and still be operating, and they could instead reap all the benefits of the advertising revenue on their own site as I'm SURE it would generate tons of traffic, and the artists could garner a royalty of that revenue based on some multiple of how many times their music was played:advertising revenue. Who wouldn't want to advertise on the de-facto standard for obtaining freely available mainstream music?

reply to post by alphabetaone


there will always be a way for people to beat the system and get their music for free but the RIAA and the labels are no different than the post office in that they sat idle while the world around them changed, thinking the new technology wouldn't hamper their attempts to make a buck.

The post master general saying they didn't think email would hurt the postal service is no different than hearing the studio heads whine about how digital music downloads hurt theirs.

It makes you think though, all that money that could've went in to the economy when we download our music, games and movies. To be fair, I would end up going without, but I wonder how much money would have been made if piracy didn't boom the way it did.

reply to post by Swamper


you can also say that the money not spent on music was spent on something else, like mp3 players, modems, computers etc to obtain the music.

the money wasn't always saved by the individual.

Originally posted by Swamper
It makes you think though, all that money that could've went in to the economy when we download our music, games and movies. To be fair, I would end up going without, but I wonder how much money would have been made if piracy didn't boom the way it did.

Heh.... One could argue that the money saved by pirating allows the purchase of other things, food, clothes, life saving surgery for a loved one (lol), instead of funding entertainers private jets or weeks long drug fueled parties.
I have no sympathy for them, what so ever.

reply to post by Crakeur


Well, being pragmatic as I can tend to be, I'm willing to acquiesce that some business models are more obscure than others with respect to prognosticating effects. I can see a round-table discussion whereby vested parties are attempting to calculate these effects and are likely dismissing the fact that the business world would abandon Paper contracts, and NDA's and White papers and advertisements for the unknown realm and potential of (what they probably assumed to be) the digital environment. Up to say 2000, 2001 perhaps I would be willing to give the USPS the benefit of an "ooooops". After which they should have altered their infrastructure. Perhaps by going the way of some telephone carriers, and levying ISP surcharges on email. It would have caused outrage for sure, would have kept them viable, and, more importantly, kept people working.

Telephone carriers were smart...had they thought that POTS lines were going to forever remain the prevalent technology for communication, they would be bankrupt. They saw it. I guess it didn't hurt, that they already had the core infrastructure to alter their model.

However, with respect to the music industry itself and the RIAA specifically, there should have been NO doubt. Back in the late 80's to early 90's, as a hobby, I setup, administrated and ran a 32 line BBS, The MajorBBS by Galacticomm....it was so cutting edge, so eloquent in its design for the time; the time slicing techniques for handling such traffic on such low-end equipment was almost mind shattering. Even THEN some of my buddies and other subscribers were ripping/sharing music files and we did it OFTEN. Even when CD's themselves were somewhat in their infancy. I'm equally as sure we weren't alone in that. If it was happening with as much frequence as I believe it was, then surely that must have filtered upwards.