LimeWire Settles For $105 Million

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."

Re:Does anybody actually buy music anymore?

[Desler]

Yes. Have you heard about this new service called "iTunes"? I hear Apple thinks it'll be successful in a few years.

Gorton, the Owner, Is Allegedly Worth More

[eldavojohn]

The owner is allegedly worth way more than that. From the article:

During his damages hearing last week, RIAA lawyers suggested his net worth was larger than that. They noted he possessed $100 million in an IRA account. His Manhattan home is worth more than $4 million. In addition to Lime Wire, Gorton operates a hedge fund and a medical-software company. Gorton's lawyers claimed in court that he made little money from Lime Wire. Maybe, but records show the privately owned company generated $26 million in revenue in 2006 and sales climbed dramatically after that. During most of Lime Wire's 10-year history, Gorton was chairman, CEO, and only board member.

Disclaimer: I'm the submitter so I'm probably the only person that read the article which gives me an unfair advantage.

Re:If they can win hundred million buck settlement

[Danny Rathjens]

The "criticism" section of the wikipedia article divulges some likely income streams they had. e.g. last year when they bundled the ask.com toolbar and

Prior to April 2004, the free version of LimeWire was distributed with a bundled program called LimeShop (a variant of TopMoxie), which was spyware. Among other things, LimeShop monitored online purchases in order to redirect sales commissions to Lime Wire LLC. Uninstallation of LimeWire would not remove LimeShop.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limewire#Criticism [wikipedia.org]

Re:Does anybody actually buy music anymore?

[spikenerd]

Downloaders are not the only ones "getting something for nothing". Content creators are granted rights far beyond those granted by nature to control copies of their works even after they distribute them. All of the laws and government-operated judicial system necessary to make this work are provided at the expense of tax-payers. In exchange for these expensive services, and for the people respecting their "rights", the content belongs to the public after a limited time ...except that those lyin' cheatin' thieves have stolen all the value from the rightful owners by lobbying to redefine "limited time" to extend so long that the public never gets anything worth value. Well, as a tax-paying citizen, I'm tired of being ripped off. I want all that content that rightfully belongs to the public domain! That's why we must fight the RIAA--they are exactly what they call us--pirates and thieves.

Re:Does anybody actually buy music anymore?

[TheCouchPotatoFamine]

That's BULLSHIT. You're hocking ring tones to children on locked down phones. THAT'S who you're cheering for. There is no damned reason a song deserves money when you get right down to it and it's draining money from things that would actually help the world:

it's so easily duplicated,
it's not a precious resource (there are decades of music, that the RIAA is obscuring)
it's easily created from scratch

You're saying some arbitrary imaginary dopamine rush needs to be protected with the same vigor as a piece of food that can actually feed and sustain life... oh wait, "stealing" music will get you MORE trouble then *actually* stealing food.

pure ego, man, pure ego. GO TEAM FOSS.