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Digital Top Stories
Lots of LimeWire chatter as axe waits to fall
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 17 June 2010
LimeWire wants to turn its file-sharing network into a licensed digital music service, apparently, or at least that’s what a spokeswoman for the P2P company has told C-Net.
As previously reported, while lawyers for the record industry work out just how many billions in damages they should ask for as the US courts swing in their favour regards their long running litigation against the file-sharing firm, insiders at the Lime company told Computer World earlier this week that they were “actively engaged” in talks with the labels with the aim of settling past differences amicably and moving forward on some licensed LimeWire music services.
Insiders at the majors, though, say the US record industry’s lawyers are ready to land the final blow in their long running legal battle with LimeWire, and sue the file-sharing company and its founder Mark Gorton out of business, and preferably into the gutter.
The Lime Group has been developing side-line licensed music services alongside its contentious file-sharing network for a few years now, and has signed up a handful of indies to said services and recruited some former major label execs to try to bring the big boys on board. But LimeWire seems to now be saying it is ready to make its actual file-sharing network legit too, presumably funded by a combination of subscription fees and advertising.
C-Net quote a spokesman thus: “It [the all new licensed LimeWire file-sharing network] will have unrestricted downloading and streaming. It will be easy-to-use and easy to pay for. It will allow consumers to better discover music through advanced search tools, find more recommendations, and have access to millions of songs on-demand”.
Of course, record industry execs will be keen to note that it’s only now, as a judge prepares to issue an injunction ordering the LimeWire file-sharing network be closed, that the Lime Group is actively talking about taking its core product legit.
It seems unlikely any licensed version of the LimeWire file-sharing network could work. For starters, if it still operated as a true P2P file-sharing network, none of the major record companies would license it anyway, even if there wasn’t ten years of bad blood between the labels and the Lime Group. As it is, some senior execs at the big labels would rather see the Lime Group collapse than do any deal, even if the deal was actually attractive to them.
And it is unlikely any deal the Lime Group could offer would be attractive. First, because the majors would probably want any new agreement to start with a multi-billion dollar settlement for past infringement, which LimeWire couldn’t afford. And even if it could, the day-to-day licensing costs of providing the sort of service LimeWire described to C-Net would cost a whole lot more than the $20 million a year it’s currently making from ad and subscription revenues. And its ad revenues might even go down, because it’s likely any licensed P2P network would have limitations put in place by the labels which would make the service less attractive to a sizable portion of the file-sharing network’s users.
So, to conclude, don’t hold your breath for a licensed LimeWire becoming a reality. Some reckon not even Gorton and the Lime Group team really believe they can launch a licensed file-sharing service, but they are noisily discussing such a thing to try to convince whichever judge decides what damages they must pay to the record labels that they tried really hard to launch a non-copyright-infringing version of their service, so that said judge might show some leniency when considering the labels’ multi-billion dollar claim.
And the music publishers’ multi-billion dollar claims, too. Because once a file-sharing service is sinking under the weight of record industry litigation, you can rely on the music publishers to step in and demand their share of the damages. And a consortium of US publishers, including all the majors, Bug Music, MPL Music Publishing, Peermusic and the Richmond Organisation, have done just that, filing their lawsuit earlier this month, once a US court had confirmed the Lime Group was guilty of copyright infringement.
Though LimeWire say they are optimistic they can reach a settlement with the publishers too. The firm’s CEO George Searle told CMU: “We definitely want publishers at the table. We have had many promising meetings with labels, publishers, songwriters and artists alike about our new music service and a business model that will compensate the entire industry. Publishers are absolutely a part of that solution, and we’re hopeful that this action will serve as a catalyst to help us get to there”. I wouldn’t hold my breath.
