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So Limewire is out of the p2p landscape as reported earlier this week but the troubles are far from over for the company and its founder, Mark Gorton.The record companies that sued LimeWire back in 2006 seem pretty determined in obtaining damage compensation that could reach $1 billion (this is because damages for committing copyright infringement not only deliberately but with commercial purpose as well, range from $750 to $150,000 per work and the plaintiffs claim more than 10,000 songs have been shared illegally and demand compensation for each and every one of them).Despite the fact LimeWire’s computers never actually hosted any infringing content, U.S. District Court Judge Kimba Wood signed the injunction that killed the file sharing service without hesitation saying in her decision that by connecting its users and encouraging them to share unauthorized content over a p2p network, it facilitated copyright infringement. Mark Gorton has all the reasons to worry since his other companies could also get involved in this hunt for damage compensation.Limewire Group “almost certainly will be liable for statutory damages where the upward limit for each statutory award is $150,000,” wrote Judge Wood. Quoting the decision that until now marked the last most dramatic shut down of a file sharing service – the Grokster.com website, she wrote that “the amount of statutory damages at issue here ‘is so staggering’ that it ‘would very probably be well beyond’ LimeWire’s ‘anticipated resources.’”At the same time LimeWire lawyers are trying to obtain the reduction of the fees. In this respect they have filed a motion demanding to investigate music-licensing deals the record companies have closed recently. RIAA’s evidence about the number of copyrighted works that have been infringed has also been called into question.
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Topic: Limewire vs. Record Labels: The Battle over Money (Read 702 times)
