For the past few decade the record industry have declared an all-out war against piracy and file sharers. One of their controversial policy is suing an individual or company caught doing file sharing and piracy through the internet. An identification by using an Internet Protocol address was one of their bases.
Limewire was one of the alleged plaintiff. They owe between $400 billion and $75 trillion to the record industry. Federal Court Judge Kimba Wood described the damages request as “absurd” and contrary to copyright law. The record industry’s request for a summary judgment against Limewire had never happen before anywhere in the world.
Statutory damages were based upon the number of songs downloaded for example for every songs downloaded it was worth $10 in statutory damages given to the record label. With millions of songs downloaded from Limewire for the past few years, they owed more money compared to the total revenue of the entire record industry.
United States record labels Warner Bros Records, Sony Music Entertainment, Capitol Records and ten other labels have already succeeded on May 11, 2010. The judge have found a probable cause for copyright infringement and the trial will be scheduled on May 2, 2011.
The $75 trillion liability could not be happen in reality for it caused more than the entire GDP of the world combined. With an estimated $65 trillion Gross Domestic Product for the year 2011, how could a single company ever handled this kind of liability.
