RIAA Wins Big in LimeWire Lawsuit

Sprtfan said:
What you are saying makes common sense, but the law and common sense has little to do with each other. From your drug dealer example before, its not illegal to sell a bong but it is illegal to sell pot. Proving what something is intended to be used for assumes you no what the person making it is thinking. The person selling the bong can say it is to be used to smoke tobacco. The maker of the program can say it should be used to share none copy written material. Unless they have proof that the maker advertised its use or have some other type of proof that this was his intent, it sets a bad precedent.
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But you left out a major part of my example. Getting paid by a drug dealer to sell drugs at your shop. Correct by itself there is nothing wrong with the bong or crack pipe, but once you put a person at your shop selling drugs and giving you some of the profit things change.

Just positing "don't use this for illegal actions" doens't mean that it wasn't designed for that. i remember back before all of these programs when mIRC was a common way to share files people would post a "warning" about how they are positing all of their music, games and movies for their friend jim to download if you aren't their friend jim then don't download them. That was a lie just to make them try to appear as if there was a valid reason for them to have that stuff online like that. Same here, simplily posting "don't use this for illegal purposes" doesn't mean that their intent from the start wasn't to give people a way to illegally share copywriten material and that they didn't make 99% of their money via people downloading such content.
 
You still would have to prove what their intent was. Do you really think that the people that make and sell bongs think that people will only smoke tobacco with it? I never used Limeware and do not know much about it but I'm guessing it made its money through selling ad space? Your person at a shop selling drugs would be equal to Limeware hiring someone to upload copywritten material. I think the better comparison would be the shop hanging posters advertising their pipes where drug dealers hang out.
 
Sprtfan said:
You still would have to prove what their intent was. Do you really think that the people that make and sell bongs think that people will only smoke tobacco with it? I never used Limeware and do not know much about it but I'm guessing it made its money through selling ad space? Your person at a shop selling drugs would be equal to Limeware hiring someone to upload copywritten material. I think the better comparison would be the shop hanging posters advertising their pipes where drug dealers hang out.
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Limewire is not like FTP or other P2P software. It's sole purpose is sharing video and music files exactly like Napster used to do. The intent is quite clear.
 
Azhar said:
Limewire is not like FTP or other P2P software. It's sole purpose is sharing video and music files exactly like Napster used to do. The intent is quite clear.
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Limeware is different than Napster since was not fully peer-to-peer since it used servers to maintain lists of connected systems and the files they provided.
I guess my question is could Limewire be used to share none copy written material? As I mentioned before, unless there is some other proof other than it can be used for illegal activities it could open the door to go after more legitimate things. I have never seen Limewire before. Did they come out and say you can find music and videos for free?

I'm glad its gone but I don't want to sacrifice my or others rights to get rid of it.
 
the WORSE possible punishment for limewire should an order to be shutdown, its beyond ridiculous to have them pay copyright infringements that other people shared
 
so assuming the riaa tries to get the full 150,000 for each download, i'd guess that the total amount they're gunning for is rubbing against the total amount of money in the entire world as we know it.
 
Exavior said:
not at all. at i pointed out in an above reply it is all intent. FTP was created as a protocol to move files. It can be used for illegit use, but it wasn't meant that way to start with no more than http was meant to download illegit content. limewire and the rest started with the intent for you to pirate stuff.
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Is there tangible evidence to support your allegation of their intent, or is it just speculation? The problem is that if Limewire loses, and the Judge's ruling is not explicily narrow enough regarding what represents an intent to contribute to copyright violation, it creates a precedence that can then be used to go after things like companies running FTP servers. It is one of the rules of logic that you cannot prove a negative. It is impossible to prove conclusively that a company is not intentionally contributing to copyright violation. A lot of people rights to privacy and a lot of useful services can get trampled in attempts to avoid having the RIAA bring a trillion dollar lawsuit.

There's a lot of copyrighted material on YouTube. What's to keep the RIAA going after Google's deep pockets? Is Google's willingness to take down material when complaints are filed with them enough to prevent them from being found to have contributed to massive copyright infringment. After all, unlawfully used copyrighted material abounds on YouTube despite what might be considered token efforts to remove some of it. Why are their efforts enough while Limewire's are not. Both provide services, and both make money from doing so. Why does one get you sued for trillions but not the other?
 
It seems a rather cruel and unusual punishment to be charged $150,000 per song. The worst part is that the artists don't see a dime of this. The RIAA has already stated ( a few times) that all the cash monies they win go straight back into future litigation.

And yes, the copyright punishment is silly, as are many "you owe us money now pay up" type laws (there are many!). While I won't say that the people behind Limewire don't deserve this, it's just silly to ask for that much money. Perhaps some sort of scale based on your income would be a more sensible method of deciding how much penalty to incur. Also seems much more likely to see a payout this way.

And whether it's wrong or not isn't the point of championing the side of illegality. The point is that 1) piracy will never end and 2) they're just wasting your tax dollars by holding up real law issues from being heard.
 
flatrock said:
Is there tangible evidence to support your allegation of their intent, or is it just speculation? The problem is that if Limewire loses, and the Judge's ruling is not explicily narrow enough regarding what represents an intent to contribute to copyright violation, it creates a precedence that can then be used to go after things like companies running FTP servers. It is one of the rules of logic that you cannot prove a negative. It is impossible to prove conclusively that a company is not intentionally contributing to copyright violation. A lot of people rights to privacy and a lot of useful services can get trampled in attempts to avoid having the RIAA bring a trillion dollar lawsuit.

There's a lot of copyrighted material on YouTube. What's to keep the RIAA going after Google's deep pockets? Is Google's willingness to take down material when complaints are filed with them enough to prevent them from being found to have contributed to massive copyright infringment. After all, unlawfully used copyrighted material abounds on YouTube despite what might be considered token efforts to remove some of it. Why are their efforts enough while Limewire's are not. Both provide services, and both make money from doing so. Why does one get you sued for trillions but not the other?
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You have to draw the line somewhere. Else the entire internet would get shut down because the entire internet is a source of information, copyrighted or no. Or telephones or televisions. Camcorders would be banned along with cameras and voice recorders and radios. We would all be forced to be blindfolded or muted or made deaf (doh! too late for me) at birth.

There's no denying Limewire's intent. YouTube on the other hand did not have intention of publishing copyrighted materials without permission and they are actively removing them when they find them or when it's reported.
 
So, I have a question. If the RIAA wins and gets the $150,000 for each infraction doesn't this mean that they cannot sue the individuals who downloaded the files? I know it's not technically double-dipping but you would think they would not be able to do this.:confused:
 
modi123 said:
So.. this means I should totally stop using limewire as my "cloud based" backup? Shucks.
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LOL. Just because this backup cloud lumps everyone's files together doesn't mean that it's not a backup system. :D
 
Azhar said:
You have to draw the line somewhere. Else the entire internet would get shut down because the entire internet is a source of information, copyrighted or no. Or telephones or televisions. Camcorders would be banned along with cameras and voice recorders and radios. We would all be forced to be blindfolded or muted or made deaf (doh! too late for me) at birth.

There's no denying Limewire's intent. YouTube on the other hand did not have intention of publishing copyrighted materials without permission and they are actively removing them when they find them or when it's reported.
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The problem is that there is no line just a big grey area. What you think is reasonable the RIAA might not. How fast would YouTube have to remove the copywritten material? 1hour, 1 day, 1 week? Maybe the RIAA thinks that YouTube should pay them $150,000 for every view a video gets after it had been posted for over an hour. The RIAA has shown that it will push for whatever it can get not whatever it deserves and has not demonstrated any common sense in doing so.
 
Sprtfan said:
The problem is that there is no line just a big grey area. What you think is reasonable the RIAA might not. How fast would YouTube have to remove the copywritten material? 1hour, 1 day, 1 week? Maybe the RIAA thinks that YouTube should pay them $150,000 for every view a video gets after it had been posted for over an hour. The RIAA has shown that it will push for whatever it can get not whatever it deserves and has not demonstrated any common sense in doing so.
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I agree that the punishment is too extreme. Limewire should at the very least just be shut down, perhaps fined a million or two, but certainly not $150,000 per song.
 
I thought limewire died out with bit torrent showing up, that and it's full of spyware.
 
What's up w/ all the lawsuit threads today in [H] news? :(

It disappoints me that the court holds Lime Wire responsible for its users. On that theory, should Ford be held responsible whenever someone uses a Mustang as a get-away car after robbing a bank? Totally ridiculous. I hope this lawsuit is appealed and overturned.

Someone made a great comment on that CNET article about RIAA: those who cannot innovate litigate.
 
Sprtfan said:
What you are saying makes common sense, but the law and common sense has little to do with each other. From your drug dealer example before, its not illegal to sell a bong but it is illegal to sell pot. Proving what something is intended to be used for assumes you no what the person making it is thinking. The person selling the bong can say it is to be used to smoke tobacco. The maker of the program can say it should be used to share none copy written material. Unless they have proof that the maker advertised its use or have some other type of proof that this was his intent, it sets a bad precedent.
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Tommy Chong would disagree with you on that one, he now has a federal prison id number on a server some where to prove it.
 
Outamyhead said:
I thought limewire died out with bit torrent showing up, that and it's full of spyware.
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No, torrenting is one thing, Limewire was usually preferred for individual songs and such, torrents for full albums.

I have used limewire over the years and never had a virus or spyware, but i was also not stupid enough to download a 3 mins song that was 5kb in size and try to run it.
 
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