RIAA Demands Near-Imaginary Amount Of Money From LimeWire
posted in: Music News
Not since the fall of file-sharing mogul Napster has the music industry pursued such a high-value case of copyright infringement. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has now developed an estimate of $72 trillion, yes, trillion, owed in damages from LimeWire in the aftermath of the termination of their file-sharing functions in October of 2010.
This staggering estimation was calculated by the distribution of over 11,000 songs, downloaded illegally several thousands of times each, and the RIAA is claiming compensation for each individual download that took place over LimeWire’s ten-year run. Computerworld.com reported that Judge Kimba Wood of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York found this claim to fall under the category of absurd results, saying that this award would amount to more money than the entire music industry has made since Edison’s invention of the phonograph in 1877. Judge Wood’s statement was rather accurate considering that the total combined wealth of the entire world, as multiple sources have pointed out, is roughly $60 trillion.
Judge Wood ruled that the music industry had the right to claim only a single statutory damage award from Defendants per work infringed. This could still force LimeWire to return up to $150,000 per download, totaling to over $1 billion in damages.