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Digital Legal Top Stories
US court rules against LimeWire
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 13 May 2010
According to C-Net, a US judge has ruled in favour of the Recording Industry Association Of America in its very long running lawsuit against LimeWire.
As those with very long memories will remember, the LimeWire case is the most recent in a long line of lawsuits launched by the RIAA against companies providing P2P file-sharing software and services in the US.
A lot of US-based P2P companies left the market after the landmark Supreme Court ruling in the Grokster case in 2005 made it pretty clear that anybody providing file-sharing software which didn’t include the sort of content filter systems that would put off most file-sharers could be held liable for contributory copyright infringement.
LimeWire, however, decided to fight the legal action against them. Which was significant because by the time Grokster et al went offline, the file-sharing client most popular in the middle of the last decade, Kazaa (tackled legally by the record industry in Australia), was falling out of fashion and LimeWire was becoming the P2P network de jour.
Even now, despite everyone getting distracted by The Pirate Bay and other BitTorrent trackers and communities, LimeWire still powers a large amount of file-sharing (58% in the US, according to an NPD report).
LimeWire’s responses to the RIAA’s litigation were never great, in the main relying on arguments that had been presented and rejected in the Grokster case. But LimeWire did somehow manage to make the litigation against them incredibly drawn out, allowing them to continue distributing their P2P client in the meantime.
After initially being bullish about their chances of defeating the record industry’s legal action, more recently LimeWire have been trying to build up the legitimate side of their business – in particular a licensed (by some indies) download store – seemingly in a bid to persuade the more corporate end of the record industry to partner with them, rather than sue them out of business.
It’s not clear what the summary judgement issued in the record industry’s favour on Tuesday will mean for those ambitions to turn LimeWire into primarily a legit digital content service. According to CNet, the judgement says it believes Lime Group and the company’s founder Mark Gorton are liable for contributory and inducing copyright infringement as well as engaging in uncompetitive practices.
The ruling says: “The evidence demonstrates that [Lime Group] optimised LimeWire’s features to ensure that users can download digital recordings, the majority of which are protected by copyright, and that [LimeWire] assisted users in committing infringement”.
It’s assumed the RIAA will now apply for an injunction to have the P2P software bit of LimeWire shut down, though the file-sharing firm have indicated they plan to keep on fighting despite this latest legal set back.
Of course, the record industry has generally been successful when fighting those who provide P2P services through the courts, though past legal wins in Napster, Groskter, Kazaa and The Pirate Bay have done little to curtail the growth of illegal file-sharing. It’s true LimeWire is still a lot more popular than any of those other services were at the point at which they were shut down, though it seems certain that even if the RIAA does successfully stop LimeWire distributing new file-sharing software, those who really want to continue to illegally file-share will find a way to do so.
