A lawsuit filed against Limewire about four years ago has finally reached a verdict. The file-sharing service has been found guilty of assisting users in committing copyright infringement “on a massive scale” according to a federal judge. The suit was filed by the RIAA in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on behalf of eight major music publishers.
LimeWire LLC was charged with facilitating “pervasive online infringement.” They were also accused of “allowing and actively encouraging users to participate in music piracy.” The plaintiffs claimed that over 93 percent of the content available via Limewire infringed on one copyright or another.
A visit to the Limewire website stops visitors cold with a popup message and a link to the actual court injunction:
“THIS IS AN OFFICIAL NOTICE THAT LIMEWIRE IS UNDER A COURT-ORDERED INJUNCTION TO STOP DISTRIBUTING AND SUPPORTING ITS FILE-SHARING SOFTWARE. DOWNLOADING OR SHARING COPYRIGHTED CONTENT WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION IS ILLEGAL.”
Back in May, a court found Limewire liable for copyright infringement. They even held founder Mark Gorton personally responsible for the copyright violations.
“The evidence demonstrates that [Lime Wire] optimized LimeWire’s features to ensure that users can download digital recordings, the majority of which are protected by copyright,” Wood said in her 59-page decision. “And that [Lime Wire] assisted users in committing infringement.”
This latest case resumes in January 2011, when the court will figure out how much Limewire has to pay. With the minimum penalty at $150,000 for each music copyright infringement, Limewire may be on the hook for around $1 billion.
While our copyrights must be protected, I’m still on the fence about this case. Limewire is only a piece of software that leverages an existing underlying file-sharing network. That peer-to-peer network is still there and Limewire is not the only game in town. Users are already looking into alternatives like Frostwire. BitTorrent also offers an alternative file-sharing method that users could turn to. It’s unlikely that the RIAA or any other entity could shutdown all available avenues for piracy.
Will you miss Limewire? Do you think it and software like it should be shutdown like this?
via PC World