Lime Wire countersues RIAA

[Slimy]

In response to: https://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=484139

Lime Wire LLC yesterday filed its response to the RIAA lawsuit against it, and the company plans to mount a vigorous defense. Instead of simply defending themselves, Lime Wire has gone on offense and countersued the music labels for anti-competitive activities, illegal restraint of trade, tortious interference, and deceptive trade practices.

To kick things off, Lime Wire wants to make sure the court knows that it is built on a substantially different architecture from the original (and infamous) Napster. Unlike its predecessor, Lime Wire uses "truly decentralized P2P technology" and only allows users to install the software if they agree not to use the application to infringe copyrights. While certainly worthwhile points to make, similar arguments didn't save Grokster from the gavel.

Much more interesting is the lengthy section in which Lime Wire discusses its decision to "go straight." The company developed a plan to educate users that downloading copyrighted material was generally illegal and devised a hash-based filter to prevent the transfer of copyrighted works on the Lime Wire network. The company hoped to make money by "encouraging users to purchase music 'legally' by re-directing them to 'legal' sites such as iTunes." If you don't think that this sounds like a profitable strategy, you're not alone.

But the company never had the chance to test its master plan, because the music labels were unwilling to license the necessary hashes to Lime Wire; without them, the filter wouldn't work. The labels allegedly told the company that only acoustic fingerprinting technology was good enough to avoid a lawsuit, and that the only real way of getting such technology online in a hurry was to partner with iMesh, a P2P company with close RIAA connections.

Lime Wire asserts that "this boycott and collusive activity was directed at and intended to injure Lime Wire because it owned and operated a service for the digital distribution of copyrighted works"?a claim that seems ridiculous on its face. If the labels were intent on knee-capping businesses because they operate services for the digital distribution of copyrighted works, iTunes, Rhapsody, etc, would never have gotten off the ground.

The counterclaim does go on to charge that the music labels work in concert (no pun intended) and therefore form a practical monopoly that has engaged in the illegal restraint of trade. This second claim is actually predicated upon the first (that the major labels constitute a monopoly). If they did not, complaints that they "have at their disposal their powerful copyrights to pick and choose with whom they would do business and on what terms" sound like little more than whining.

The entire point of "copyright" is that it gives the owner the right to control the making of copies?and if the owner does not want to let a certain company distribute its copyrighted material, it is generally under no obligation to do so. Lime Wire agrees with this in principle, but argues that "an anti-competitive agreement among multiple copyright owners not to distribute their content to targeted third parties, such as Lime Wire, or to destroy the revenue streams and business of distribution competitors, is not within the limited grant of the copyright monopoly conferred by the government."

Lime Wire is asking for actual damages, punitive damages, and legal fees from the RIAA. Someone cue the 1812 Overture?it's the perfect soundtrack for the legal bombast sure to play a large role in this case.

Source

The proprietors of the P2P file-sharing program LimeWire, who were sued last August by a coalition of the major names in the recording industry, has filed a countersuit in the U.S. District Court in New York, claiming that the RIAA is using its copyrights over recorded works as a weapon to disable competition from anyone in the Internet distribution business.

But anti-competitive behavior is not the counter-claimant's principal defense. First, Lime Group argues that LimeWire is unlike Napster -- whose original incarnation lost its legal battle and was forced to shutdown -- in that Lime's software does not rely on a centralized server to warehouse its directory of sharable files.

Instead, the directory itself is assembled by each user based on a P2P distributed query of other users' available content. That fact, Lime Group claims, relieves it from being held accountable as a broker for potentially illegal transactions.

"Users who install LimeWire on their computers do so by their own volition," the countersuit reads, "and are only able to install the LimeWire application if they first agree not to use the application to infringe the copyrights of others. Thereafter, those persons make use of LimeWire in the manner that they alone choose."

From that point, the countersuit explains that the original plaintiffs -- Arista Records, Atlantic Recording, BMG Music, Capitol Records, Elektra Entertainment, Interscope, LaFace, Motown, Priority, Sony BMG, UMG, Virgin Records, and Warner Bros. -- "joined together and embarked on a scheme to cartelize [the digital music] market and its financial promise for themselves."

"Their goal was simple: to destroy any online music distribution service they did not own or control, or force such services to do business with them on exclusive and/or other anticompetitive terms so as to limit and ultimately control the distribution and pricing of digital music, all to the detriment of consumers," the suit reads.

It may be a difficult case to make, especially given the abundance of analysts' opinions in recent years that digital music distribution was actually a boat that the music industry didn't see coming.

After technology company MetaMachine, which produced services for file-sharing group eDonkey, settled with the RIAA two weeks ago, RIAA CEO Mitch Bainwol made a public claim that LimeWire would be the next domino to fall.

If LimeWire can't be held accountable for its lack of a centralized file directory, the RIAA made a case that it might be held accountable because it knows who its users are. And if individuals are compelled to use LimeWire because they can trade in illegal materials, then Lime Group may be complicit.

"Defendants have the right and ability to supervise and control the infringing activities of LimeWire users on Defendants' system/network," stated the August RIAA complaint. "For example, Defendants can view searches on LimeWire, and view what is being 'shared' via LimeWire at a given time. Defendants provide the LimeWire software to users, distribute updates and upgrades, and have dictated license terms governing the use of the software."

A 2005 paper by Microsoft Research technicians looking into the relative security of users on P2P file-sharing systems, which the paper termed the "Darknet," alleged that P2P systems built on Gnutella technology (LimeWire is one of them) may be vulnerable due to the fact that its users are not necessarily anonymous.

A malicious user could conceivably trace users' endpoints. Such an argument could end up hurting LimeWire legally, if it can be proven that LimeWire can affectively re-assemble a list of its users at any given time, and perhaps take a look at what files they're sharing. In fact, plaintiffs could allege, if LimeWire fails to do so, it may be condoning file-sharing violations indirectly.

In its countersuit, Lime Group claims it tried to establish a paid subscription model site using a derivative of its technology, called MagnetMix, where subscribers download licensed content. But certain of the original plaintiffs declined to participate, Lime Group said, citing the fact that Lime didn't use the recording companies' preferred method for digital rights management.

It then alleges that the recording industry has colluded to set up a "preferred" P2P service provider called iMesh, which the RIAA then demanded that companies such as Lime make deals with, or else face the threat of lawsuit.

"iMesh is allegedly the only 'authorized' P2P file-sharing company in the U.S.," states Lime Group's countersuit (although there clearly are others). "It claims to have been granted a license by the Major Labels to allow distribution of their content, and also offers a 'one-stop shop' for what iMesh promotes as the only RIAA-approved filtering mechanism."

The countersuit points to the fact that iMesh's CEO was the former CEO of the RIAA, though Jason Berman originally left the RIAA to join the board of directors of Peer Impact, another P2P provider of all-licensed content.

"iMesh's and the RIAA's goal is to have these P2P companies concede, under the threat of expensive litigation, to sell their assets for essentially nothing, with the promise of a 'get out of jail free' card from the RIAA," the countersuit continues. "In return, the P2P company must simply turn over its user base (which is the single largest asset typically) to iMesh so they can then force a conversion to the iMesh platform which, in turn, will lead to huge profits to iMesh and, of course, the Major Labels."

Source

Edited September 27, 2006 by slimy

[Inplode]

lol give them hell !

[Randolph]

Limewire for the win!!!

[TimRogers]

I support Limewire!

[+Kyle Subscriber¹]

Yay!

[aajvs99]

go limewire!

[Beaux]

kind of off-topic i guess, but it's so distracting when trying to read the article...

the author of that article needs to go to school and learn some english

(Nate Anderson from arstechnica.com)

[dpanda]

limewire go go go.

[Kreuger]

Limewire Frostwire for the win

[ZonoBurk]

You go Limewire! :p

[M/\TT]

Nice! Go Limewire :D

[gdodson]

As long as Limewire presents their case properly, I'd say they have a good chance of winning. Of course they may settle out of court.

[Wheazel]

As long as Limewire presents their case properly, I'd say they have a good chance of winning. Of course they may settle out of court.

You think?

RIAA is a real heavyweight to compete with. David vs Goliath alike.

But I totally agree with LimeWire. Holding p2p accountable for illegal downloading is like

- holding the car manufactures accountable for traffic accidents,

- holding gun manufactures accountable for family tragedy with guns,

etc...

See where I'm going...

[Death By Sexy]

limewire... the peoples champion! ;)

[ViperAFK]

Haha, finally someone doesn't just back out, you can't hold p2p accountable as said above, limewire has a good arguement.

[Matrix XII]

I hate Limewire, but I like anyone better than the RIAA :p

In that case, go Limewire!!

[Sniper101]

Limewire wow i remember when i use to have abit of source code for that :p anyway im still supporting limewire all the way and i use all the Copyright stuff within it and it does work until some times you get the stupid DRM ones :( and then it locks it self. But yer i buy limewire Pro License ever year :) go limewire LLC :)

if limewire fails then there's yer........i wont say :)

[Dotdot]

LOL this should be funny

[Krpano]

(Y)

Go Limewire

[Simon Veteran]

Limewire all the way! I hope they win, it'd give the RIAA a nice slap in the face. There are so many other things out there they should be focusing on than Limewire, like people who can, but don't, filter the content on their services.

[revvo]

kind of off-topic i guess, but it's so distracting when trying to read the article...

the author of that article needs to go to school and learn some english

(Nate Anderson from arstechnica.com)

Kind of off-topic I guess, but shouldn't you perfect your english before looking at others like putting a Capital letter and capitalizing your 'i' and ending your sentence with a period because it's so annoying to read people's posts!

Especially ArsTechnica which is one of the better I.T. websites out there, english isn't the thing you should be looking at but details that they always go for.

As for Limewire, really go through their case and you'll see they do have some strong points that they want to defend.

**** RIAA. They might as well sue ICANN, and modems and anything that helps us connect to the series of tubes in which music is exchanged.

Edited September 27, 2006 by rainman.

[Beaux]

Kind of off-topic I guess, but shouldn't you perfect your english before looking at others like putting a Capital letter and capitalizing your 'i' and ending your sentence with a period because it's so annoying to read people's posts!

a forum post is different from a news article

i think it's annoying to read forum posts with capital letters and periods at the ends of sentences

Edited September 28, 2006 by Beaux

[Brian Veteran]

a forum post is different from a news article

i think it's annoying to read forum posts with capital letters and periods at the ends of sentences

So reading a forum post is fine with improper or irregular grammar but an article is not? They are both implementations of the English language and you technically cannot differentiate between the two as they should both be written with the same mechanics. Furthermore, through the transitive property you find forum posts with proper punctuation annoying so that means that you find punctuation in general annoying. I have formulated this hypothesis on the supposition that you specifically added the noun-modifier (or adjective) to "forum post" meaning that you do not mind "idiot posts" but just proper punctuation. So in contradicting yourself by saying you admire proper grammar and punctuation in one context and then condemning it in another you have proved yourself to be either undecisive or unintelligent.

ON-TOPIC: Anyway, I think the arguments are great and if developed correctly could stand up, the only problem I see is that it did not work for Grokster (similar arguments) but it may for Limewire. They are turning the matter away from the pirated works and more towards the software itself which is genius for Limewire. They are right, they aren't doing anything wrong, they are just allowing files to be shared. It is not their problem that those files happen to be illegal.

Good Analogy: You aren't going to fine the 18-wheeler manufacturers because some people transport drugs in them.

[12Iceman]

I've never used limewire myself, but hey... I'll support anyone going up against the RIAA.

[Beaux]

So reading a forum post is fine with improper or irregular grammar but an article is not? They are both implementations of the English language and you technically cannot differentiate between the two as they should both be written with the same mechanics. Furthermore, through the transitive property you find forum posts with proper punctuation annoying so that means that you find punctuation in general annoying. I have formulated this hypothesis on the supposition that you specifically added the noun-modifier (or adjective) to "forum post" meaning that you do not mind "idiot posts" but just proper punctuation. So in contradicting yourself by saying you admire proper grammar and punctuation in one context and then condemning it in another you have proved yourself to be either undecisive or unintelligent.

there's no logic at all in any of this

"you technically cannot differentiate between the two"

you say i cannot do something that i have already done and even told you how

"through the transitive property you find forum posts with proper punctuation annoying so that means that you find punctuation in general annoying."

you say one thing means another thing when the two have nothing to do with each other

you make wrong assumptions that wouldn't make sense even if they were true

"contradicting yourself by saying you admire proper grammar and punctuation in one context and then condemning it in another"

i never said i admired proper grammar or punctuation in any context and i never condemned it either

you just need ot learn to read or something