Question

Review the copyright infringement lawsuit filed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) against "peer-to-peer file sharing" facilitator LimeWire.

Question is

• Explain the question(s) of law before the court.
• Describe the court's ruling.

Answer 1

P2P…sounds harmless enough, but not according to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the trade group representing the four largest recording companies. Peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing is a term that refers to a decentralized computing network in which users exchange files directly with other users.

In 2006, RIAA filed suit against LimeWire claiming that “as much as 93 percent of LimeWire’s file sharing traffic was unauthorized copyright material.”

In the late 1990s to early 2000s online file sharing programs were very popular in the UnitedStates. Napster was one of the most popular program that people used mainly to download free music by its users. Napster shutdown in 2001 due to a lawsuit, but in June of 2000, LimeWire gained popularity across the country accumulating millions of users.

The popular file-sharing network company LimeWire created at the beginning of 2000 by Mark Gorton that allowed users to With this many users, they also caught the eyes of many big music companies, and in 2006, the RIAA brought a lawsuit against the company for providing music consumers means for attaining music for no cost. This wasn’t ruled illegal, but said to provide a means for illegal file sharing upload, share, and download files for free without permission and consent from record labels,.

Livewire received a lawsuit for $105 million in 2006. This suit was filed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) accusing LimeWire of distributing illegally up to 11,000 copyrighted songs. In the suit, Mark Gorton is considered liable for copyright infringement and responsible for paying financial damages up to $150,000 per song although the labels had sought a maximum penalty of $1.4 billion