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The Final Dakar · Mar 28, 2011, 04:06 PM

Just wanted to post this because it's most absurd thing I've heard in a while.

RIAA Thinks LimeWire Owes $75 Trillion in Damages - PCWorld

the RIAA and the 13 record companies that are suing LimeWire for copyright infringement have demanded damages ranging from $400 billion to $75 trillion, and have claimed that Section 504(c)(1) of the Copyright Act allow them to request damages for each instance of infringement where two or more parties were liable. In other words, the RIAA thinks it should be entitled to damages not only for the individual works, but for every time that work was infringed (i.e. downloaded by another user).

The judge already told them they were crazy. Personally, any lawyer that submits this with a straight face deserves to be instantly disbarred. I mean, get real.

CollinG3G4 · Mar 28, 2011, 04:26 PM

Good, I hope the RIAA wins and gets taxed for the full amount next year.

subego · Mar 28, 2011, 04:29 PM

Totally sensationalist article. The RIAA is only asking for 400 billion. I think this is a reasonable assessment of the dam...

Of the damag...

The... the... damages...

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

You're right. Straight face is impossible.

Spheric Harlot · Mar 29, 2011, 02:06 AM

Wow. You could invade a country for that amount.

Jawbone54 · Mar 29, 2011, 04:59 AM

Good. I'm glad.

Anything to remind the public of how ridiculous they are.

Waragainstsleep · Mar 29, 2011, 05:14 AM

I don't know how the rest of you can afford to live at all to be honest. We poor record executives must get extremely low salaries compared to the rest of you. Even with my "special RIAA discount" I had to pay $750,000 for a pair of shoelaces just this morning. The cost of living is ridiculous these days. The tyres on my 1992 VW cost $6.2 million each with my discount and my last Starbucks bill was over a million dollars. How do the rest of you afford things?

BadKosh · Mar 29, 2011, 08:15 AM

And yet the RIAA has done NOTHING to stop the illegal CD's being sold on most corners in DC.

Paco500 · Mar 29, 2011, 08:41 AM

It seems the primary thing the RIAA has accomplished is providing a kind of moral cover for people who pirate music. By acting like such amoral and incontrovertible d1cks, they have given otherwise moral folks a pass to break the law.

I say this not as an angel- I've dabbled on LimeWire (to be fair, primarily to look for tracks I couldn't find anywhere legally- shaky moral ground I acknowledge) in the past and the RIAA has made it easier to not feel too bad about myself.

Jawbone54 · Mar 29, 2011, 10:36 AM

Originally Posted by Paco500

It seems the primary thing the RIAA has accomplished is providing a kind of moral cover for people who pirate music. By acting like such amoral and incontrovertible d1cks, they have given otherwise moral folks a pass to break the law.

Eeeeeeexactly.

OreoCookie · Mar 29, 2011, 10:37 AM

I wonder how the lawyers can maintain a straight face when they write -- let alone read -- this bs. $75 trillion, that's more than the GDP … of all nations put together.

Jawbone54 · Mar 29, 2011, 10:53 AM

YouTube - Austin Powers - 100 billion dollars

The Final Dakar · Mar 29, 2011, 10:57 AM

Originally Posted by Paco500

I say this not as an angel- I've dabbled on LimeWire (to be fair, primarily to look for tracks I couldn't find anywhere legally- shaky moral ground I acknowledge) in the past and the RIAA has made it easier to not feel too bad about myself.

God, I'm not sure I used LimeWire past 2003 – and even then it was unreliable as hell. Let's see, spend 10 minutes searching for a song, trying to discern which of the 50 hits is the actual file, trying to find one that's at least 192 kps and has several seeds, pray it downloads.

Or go to iTunes and spend 99¢. Tough call.

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

I wonder how the lawyers can maintain a straight face when they write -- let alone read -- this bs. $75 trillion, that's more than the GDP … of all nations put together.

I'm guessing the RIAA springs for Botox treatments to paralyze the facial muscles.

Doofy · Mar 29, 2011, 11:10 AM

More to this than meets the eye, methinks. I don't know what, but my "more to this than meets the eye" meter is hitting the red.

The Final Dakar · Mar 29, 2011, 11:15 AM

Originally Posted by Doofy

More to this than meets the eye, methinks. I don't know what, but my "more to this than meets the eye" meter is hitting the red.

I sincerely doubt it. They've won $2 million awards against a single infringer (later slashed by the judge) so I imagine scaled for a program that allowed millions of people to infringe it probably scales to equally ludicrous numbers.

Paco500 · Mar 29, 2011, 11:23 AM

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar

God, I'm not sure I used LimeWire past 2003 – and even then it was unreliable as hell. Let's see, spend 10 minutes searching for a song, trying to discern which of the 50 hits is the actual file, trying to find one that's at least 192 kps and has several seeds, pray it downloads.

Or go to iTunes and spend 99¢. Tough call.

Agreed, which is pretty much why it was a last resort for those things I couldn't get legally- which to me is iTunes, Amazon or eMusic. I've never bothered with anything else.

But to be fair, I always had pretty good luck with LimeWire- perhaps because what I was looking for was obscure enough not to have scores of bad links.

The Final Dakar · Mar 29, 2011, 11:25 AM

Perhaps there's some kind of moral conundrum I'm unfamiliar with, but I don't see what is immoral about downloading music that isn't available. To me that's a completely different deal.

Phileas · Mar 29, 2011, 11:36 AM

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar

Perhaps there's some kind of moral conundrum I'm unfamiliar with, but I don't see what is immoral about downloading music that isn't available. To me that's a completely different deal.

Agreed. There are a bunch of blogs out there that share music they've digitized from vinyl that's been out of print for sometimes decades. As far as I am concerned they're preserving music history.

Paco500 · Mar 29, 2011, 11:46 AM

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar

Perhaps there's some kind of moral conundrum I'm unfamiliar with, but I don't see what is immoral about downloading music that isn't available. To me that's a completely different deal.

The only conundrum is that I am inherently lazy and I don't go to great lengths to find the stuff beyond checking the digital sources above. It's possible some of the stuff I've gotten is still available on physical media- retail or direct from the artist. As a very broad example- The Beatles. It may make me a bad person, but I'm not enough of a fan to go buy a whole CD, but there are one or two songs I wanted. As until recently I couldn't get them legally digitally, I turned to LimeWire. That's stealing.

I have no issue at all with downloading something that's no longer in print. Grabbing a digital copy in this case (and in my mind) is no different than buying a used CD off eBay.

olePigeon · Mar 29, 2011, 12:45 PM

I think the RIAA paid only 8 cents a title when they were stealing music from artists by selling them as "Greatest Hits" compilations.

dbjork · Mar 29, 2011, 12:59 PM

I would have taken this seriously; then I read $75 trillion ... RIAA wants all the money in the world, and more ... Other industries make more than them, but they are really clueless to ask for this amount.

shabbasuraj · Mar 30, 2011, 07:05 AM

The RIAA...

lol....asfdljaksd fsjdhfalksjdfhakjslhfuiwqeyroiuqweyroiuqmnbvnba,ms nv

OreoCookie · Mar 30, 2011, 09:34 AM

Originally Posted by Doofy

More to this than meets the eye, methinks. I don't know what, but my "more to this than meets the eye" meter is hitting the red.

I just don't see it, the RIAA with their ludicrous claims is hurting their own cause. Every normal person is just thinking `What kind of drugs are they on?' and whether they have any left over to share. To me, that's clearly yet another indication the RIAA is out of touch with reality. And that they still don't have a clear strategy how to adapt their business models to the internet age.

Their desire to stop Limewire from continuing to run their network is reasonable and IMHO that should be the primary goal of their case. Fictitious damages will be of no benefit. And then they should create new business models, see new technologies as an opportunity rather than a burden and stop treating customers like criminals. E. g. they should say goodbye to the `counting copies' idea and rather switch to something more modern. They should allow people to stream music they've purchased from the cloud (e. g. all music bought from the iTunes Music Store). Etc. etc. etc.

What I think is going to happen anyway is the following:
- RIAA will win the case and Limewire won't be able to continue distributing their software.
- Limewire's business model becomes untenable. Limewire goes belly-up.
- The damages the RIAA is awarded will probably exceed what Limewire is able to pay anyway and thus, in large part, be symbolic anyway.

Athens · Apr 5, 2011, 12:41 PM

Originally Posted by Paco500

Agreed, which is pretty much why it was a last resort for those things I couldn't get legally- which to me is iTunes, Amazon or eMusic. I've never bothered with anything else.

But to be fair, I always had pretty good luck with LimeWire- perhaps because what I was looking for was obscure enough not to have scores of bad links.

For me its not being able to find the Physical albums at a price im willing to pay. Actually just finding them at all is becoming harder. The industry is pricing itself out of the market and they wonder why people download music. I don't like buying digital downloads. I like owning CD's. But im not paying more then $10.00 for a CD and they don't have much selection in stores any more.

Either way the new LimeWire Pirate Edition is way better then the old Limewire and like with Napster the Music industry has just made it that much worse for themselves.