LimeWire Settles For $105 Million 167
eldavojohn writes "LimeWire has settled its suit with the RIAA for $105 million. It's several orders of magnitude lower than the $1.5 trillion initially demanded by the RIAA, but it ends a nearly five-year legal battle. P2P networks take heed; the monster may start looking for other targets."
Does anybody actually buy music anymore? (Score:5, Interesting)
There is plenty of music that is free and legally free. Find small artists that release MP3s then buy an album from them if you like enough (Edgen). Use Spotify if you can.
Buy second hand, RIAA gets nothing. I can live without new music. If you can't control your impulses, RIAA will never die. I'm waiting for the most recent Duran Duran album to get cheaper.
Question/Opinion I have about song value (Score:5, Interesting)
Having facilitated the mass piracy of billions of songs
So, the RIAA settled for $105 million after determining that Limewire helped people pirate "billions" of songs. Shouldn't that, then, set the value of "a" song that is shared? A conservative estimate of 2 billion songs for $105 mill is, what, about a nickel a song? Should use that value when determining damages against Jammie Thomas and anyone else.
JM convoluted O, of course, but I'm not the one settling for relative peanuts.
Re:Does anybody actually buy music anymore? (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem is, and always has been, studio time and advertising.
It's getting easier and easier to record music on a shoe-string budget, and it's getting easier to promote it yourself thanks to social networking and such. If the RIAA isn't obsolete already, it's getting there fast.
A legal double standard (Score:3, Interesting)
I acquired more music using Maxell cassette tapes than I ever did with any p2p software. In any given college dorm pre-internet era, you spent a good chunk of your available time taping floor-mate's records. After all, why else would you buy a 90 minute chromium oxide cassette if not to record two 43-minute LPs? On the equipment I used at the time, you couldn't tell the difference in quality, so why doesn't/didn't the RIAA go after Maxell, TDK, Memorex and the other manufacturers of high quality cassettes?
Limewire didn't kill the music industry. The music industry killed the music industry.