Limewire sued for $75Trillion

[Reach]

Re: Limewire sued for $25Trillion

Well, they can't possibly expect this to go through in count. There's no way the damages done by limewire even exceed 100 million. I can't see more than 10 million in damages ever going through.

With that said, could they even win this case? The primary culprit here are the users themselves sharing files, not p2p file sharing. As such, the fine line here seems to be intent, and it will be hard to prove that the intent of limewire is piracy.

I guess they can get them with assistance to copyright infringement, but it's not as clear cut as pirate bay, and they'll never win more than 10 million.

[Van T]

Re: Limewire sued for $25Trillion

They'd use it to pay the obscene lawyer fees required to sue everyone with an internet connection for 8 billion per song.

abandon ship

[fido123]

Re: Limewire sued for $25Trillion

\There's no way the damages done by limewire even exceed 100 million. I can't see more than 10 million in damages ever going through.\

I guarantee that Limewire usage has caused a minimum of 100M in damages with music sharing alone, not to mention movies, porn, and application.

[Reach]

Re: Limewire sued for $25Trillion

I guarantee that Limewire usage has caused a minimum of 100M in damages with music sharing alone, not to mention movies, porn, and application.

My point was only more or less than the damage done by limewire can probably be measured in millions, not trillions.

Damage done by a single p2p program are impossible to quantify anyway. You can't simply tally individual file shares and accumulate the individual costs, because most of those shares cause no net loss to a company. There are plenty of reasons why most shares don't cause monetary damage to a company. For example, if say person x downloads song x, but never intended on buying the material in the first place, there is no loss.

Obviously the net loss to a company from something like limewire is significantly more than any net gain, since many people would buy the material if it wasn't free, and limewire will probably get charged for it, but I would be surprised if those charges were more than 10 million.


The best part of it all being that I'm sure most of us are aware of frostwire or other associated programs and already use them <_>

[Izzy]

Re: Limewire sued for $25Trillion

y. For example, if say person x downloads song x, but never intended on buying the material in the first place, there is no loss.

I've tried to make this point to someone before but it seems like some people are really determined to believe that every illegal download is loss in profit.

They like to do this for statistics too. They make it seem so outrageous by saying piracy is causing billions of damage in lost revenue when in reality most of those cases were by people who would never consider buying it in a million years if they couldn't get it for free.

[Reincarnate]

Re: Limewire sued for $75Trillion

There are multiple variables involved in the question of whether or not piracy hurts or helps. It depends on the quality of the product as well as the cost IMO.

There are probably SOME cases of lost revenue (people who would have bought it but instead chose to pirate it when given the opportunity), but I'd argue that the marketing gain is an offset you can't ignore. I mean, look at stuff like Avatar and Black Ops. Some of the most highly pirated shit EVER and yet also extremely successful financially.

But consider something like Photoshop. Most people would never cough up that kind of money for such a program -- so it's not really lost profit. Even if Photoshop was hard to pirate, people wouldn't start buying it. They'd just move to something free like GIMP.

If I am a company selling Game A against my competitor's Game B, I'd rather someone pirate my game than theirs. Once people are generating buzz/word of mouth and using your stuff and playing your games and listening to your music, the multiplier effect helps increase the audience and therefore you gain a larger share of the pie. A pirate may not buy your music, but they may show up for your concert. Furthermore, a pirate's friends may not all be pirates themselves. Some companies/musicians/programmers get recognized through piracy and people hear about them in ways they wouldn't have heard about them otherwise.

People like to blame piracy for shitty sales when really it's because their product is shitty or overpriced. If everyone is pirating your stuff and nobody is buying it, then you're charging too much relative to quality. The alternative is that the product just sucks and nobody would bother buying it anyway, meaning it'd only get pirated and the negative buzz prevented others from bothering. I'd consider it an insult if I made something and it had shitty sales AND wasn't even worth pirating. That's just bad, lmfao.

The other point is that piracy isn't like stealing in the conventional sense. It's NOT like going into a store and stealing candy or walking into a car dealership and driving off with a car. You're not taking inventory that prevents others from enjoying it. You're taking a copy of the original. I'm boggled that some people still try to use this argument, lol.

[qqwref]

Re: Limewire sued for $75Trillion

People like to blame piracy for shitty sales when really it's because their product is shitty or overpriced.

On the other hand, even a shitty or overpriced product will be bought by a lot more people if it can't be pirated and is popular enough. Before data disks, very few people had the technical knowledge to be able to copy a console game, and so a lot of people who are roughly my age have quite substantial collections of video game cartridges. This includes people who will pirate stuff whenever they can.

A pirate may not buy your music, but they may show up for your concert. Furthermore, a pirate's friends may not all be pirates themselves.

And nowadays, a lot of pirates are starting to use a kind of "try before you buy" approach - freely downloading a few songs from an album, for instance, before buying the full thing to support the artist and have a physical copy. Listening to songs on youtube fits under this too, because you're technically getting a free, DRM-free mp3 download (most people just don't know how to extract it).

The other point is that piracy isn't like stealing in the conventional sense.

Apart from the argument that the only loss is the theoretical potential loss of revenue, it's worth mentioning that listening to a free copy of a song (or watching a free copy of a movie, etc.) is pretty much the same as borrowing a book from a library, or a movie from a rental place. This type of thing has been going on for ages, but I guess nobody has a problem with it until it crosses the line and copying becomes slightly too convenient.

I'm boggled that some people still try to use this argument, lol.

You haven't realized by now that there are a lot of dumb people out there?

[kommisar]

Re: Limewire sued for $75Trillion

It's great to live in Canada

[WTFBrandon]

Re: Limewire sued for $25Trillion

Who runs the RIAA these days? Dr. Evil?

ikr?

[Calcium Deposit]

Re: Limewire sued for $75Trillion

Asking high is a common haggling trick, leaves plenty of room to negotiate downward.
With some careful bartering I bet they could easily walk away with 10 trill~

[dragonmegaXX]

Re: Limewire sued for $75Trillion

$75,000,000,000,000
Have fun with that

[ninjaKIWI]

Re: Limewire sued for $75Trillion

Asking high is a common haggling trick, leaves plenty of room to negotiate downward.
With some careful bartering I bet they could easily walk away with 10 trill~

Are you stupid?

[ddr_f4n]

Re: Limewire sued for $75Trillion

Asking high is a common haggling trick, leaves plenty of room to negotiate downward.
With some careful bartering I bet they could easily walk away with 10 trill~

$75 trillion! That's what I call bargaining high. I'm gonna try that.

"Hey, how much you want for this Diana Ross CD?"

"Five billion dollars."

"What?!"

"OK, fine, $40."

"Whew, that's better."

My MotK buddies are quite amazing hagglers :V

[DJMAYYYNE]

Re: Limewire sued for $75Trillion

Are you stupid?

He's trolling, you just fell for the trap lol

[Aldentron]

Re: Limewire sued for $75Trillion

1. If I had $75,000,000,000,000 USD I would burn it.
2. I can't name one band that I support that is actually on a record label, or has their music copyrighted. (By "support" I mean I would attend their live performance or buy an album from. And by "album" I mean vinyl.)