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The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) estimates that filesharing website LimeWire owes it over $72 trillion dollars (£46 trillion) in damages. In October 2010, Limewire was forced to shut down after a judge in the Federal District Court ruled that its main filesharing functions be disabled, but the RIAA is still actively pursuing its owners for damages. Given that the combined wealth of the entire planet is around $60 trillion (£38 trillion), the RIAA likely has no hope of securing this in damages, but believe this is what it is owed, reports Computerworld.com.
So, where did that $72 trillion come from? If the basic statement sounds familiar, it’s because the RIAA member labels did make an extreme request on damages last year in the Limewire case, suggesting that every single download should be subject to statutory damages, which could, under some circumstances (basically willful infringement) reach up to $150,000 per download. As we (and many other sites) reported in March of 2011, Judge Kimba Wood rejectedthat claim, noting that: “Plaintiffs are suggesting an award that is more money than the entire music recording industry has made since Edison‘s invention of the phonograph in 1877,” Wood wrote, citing a Lime Group court filing referring to the inventor Thomas Edison. She called this an “absurd result.” While she did say that such an argument would likely lead to “billions” in damages, she also mentioned that it could possibly reach trillions in damages, but I don’t believe she ever mentioned $72 trillion. Someone, however, did a back of the envelope calculation based on downloads and tossed out that $72 trillion number, and it caught on widely
