Limewire

As you may have heard by now Limewire has settled its dispute with the recording industry. In a pay out of $105 million the litigation is now complete. Its such a shame that the recording industry never saw fit to license the site as it had a massive user base which included myself (creative commons music) and was a legendary file sharing service.

Over time my guess is that music sites will evolve into something that looks a lot like a licensed file sharing service and if anything these sites were simply ahead of their time.

It seems that this settlement amount, as has been the case in the past, will serve no more than to pay for the litigation that took place and that will take place in the future with artists seeing none of the money. They are the ones that are suffering under the strain of a changing market place and while the litigation has been taken on in their name they are unlikely to recoup a single cent from the result.

Of course this does nothing to prevent the illegal swapping of music and is simply another round in the wack-a-mole game that is music on the internet. There are plenty of available alternatives to Limewire including BitTorrent and Frostwire that remain options to those seeking to avoid paying for music.

There appears very little evidence that music sales have gone up since Limewire was closed and in all the entire exercise seems like a waste of time - the only one's getting rich are the lawyers. Limewire had early settled its dispute with music publishers for just $11 million.

In all it seems they got off lightly. We were lucky they were around for as long as they were.

Further Reading
ArsTechnica, LimeWire settles: are Google and Amazon next on RIAA's docket? (13 May 2011) <http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/05/limewire-settles-are-google-and-amazon-next-on-riaas-docket.ars> at 14 May 2011

TechDirt, Limewire Settles For $105 Million; How Much Of That Will Go To Artists? (13 May 2011) < http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110512/21363814255/limewire-settles-105-million-how-much-that-will-go-to-artists.shtml > at 14 May 2011

Digital Music News, Limewire Settles Out-of-Court for $105 Million... (11 May 2011) <http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/stories/051211limewire> at 14 May 2011

ZeroPaid, LimeWire Settles RIAA Suit for $105 Million (12 May 2011) < http://www.zeropaid.com/news/93433/limewire-settles-riaa-suit-for-105-million/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zeropaid+%28Zeropaid+File+Sharing+P2P+News%29 > at 14 May 2011

Digital Music News, Exclusive: Limewire Settled Publishing Case for (Just) $11 Million... (14 April 2011) < http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/stories/041311publishers > at 17 April 2011