LimeWire Settles Copyright Infringement Case 47
An anonymous reader writes "LimeWire LLC has settled the copyright infringement case brought against them by the National Music Publishers Association. The music publishers, which include Sony and Warner Music Group, sued LimeWire for copyright infringement last June. However, today all claims brought against LimeWire LLC and Chief Executive Mark Gorton were dismissed following a filing in a New York federal court. LimeWire have so far made no comments in relation to the settlement and the figure was not disclosed, but it is understood that each side will pay its own costs incurred including attorneys' fees. The music publisher's are (as always) pleased with the outcome and said 'We are pleased this litigation is over... the parties worked hard to achieve a settlement that is a good result for all involved.' LimeWire will fight on as the case brought against them by 13 record companies is due on May 2."
Why not sue everyone else? (Score:4, Interesting)
Cisco, Broadcom, Intel... hell even Darpa! Without the internet, piracy would be less of a problem. Sue everyone.
Money (Score:5, Interesting)
Where do outfits like this get their cash? Did they really sell many copies of Limewire Pro? Their potential customer base is people that don't want to pay for music, so I wouldn't think they would be all that inclined to buy software either (especially when the free version works just fine).
Re:Money (Score:3, Interesting)
Limewire was really a pet project run by a guy who has a hedgefund and a stock trading company, i doubt cashflow was ever a worry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Gorton [wikipedia.org]
Re:Why not sue everyone else? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, there's always the parable of the loaves and the fishes [biblemeanings.info].
We could call it "Jesusing" or "Jesusery" instead of "Piracy."
If nothing else, it'd get the fundie xtians' panties in a wad.
Re:Money (Score:2, Interesting)
Not only the free version worked fine but the stuff was free software, too. Many forks existed and still exist -- not to mention LimeWire Pirate Edition. Basically, they made money practicing what they preach -- the mafiaa should have tried to learn from them instead of trying to kill them but hey...
And yeah, I had paid for the PRO version. I didn't have to, I could have grabbed a pirated version (or get stuff done with other Gnutella servents, I really like gtk-gnutella) but I just liked the idea of supporting the upstream open source project. Make a good product, don't sue your users, don't consider them as morons and criminals and guess what? They pay if they like your stuff.
You probably guessed it already, I'm still seeding on Gnutella. And no, I'm not about to start paying for mafiaa's music.
Re:Money (Score:5, Interesting)
Not all are too bright and the ads were pretty deceptive. I do remember reading an interview with some soccer mom that had so barely caught that this free downloading thing was illegal, so she had bought the kids Limewire Pro (or maybe one of the others, my details are vague) and thought that this was for pay, so this is legal and all that. Of course she'd gotten some copyright nastygram and was very upset and all that, couldn't understand how they were allowed to sell such a thing etc. so yes they made some sales. Funny how 30$ doesn't buy you a license to all the music and whatnot in the world, eh? Never underestimate the gullibility of many people, they might not be Nigerian scam victim-class but pretty bad anyway. The kind you see on rent-a-coder who think they'll get an iTunes clone for 200$ and such.