The IT Nerd

If you’ve “acquired” music or movies over the Internet using less than legal means, then you’ve likely used Limewire at some point. It’s been the target of of the music and movie industry for some time. Now news.com is reporting that the Recording Industry Association of America has won a major victory in court by proving that Limewire is liable for copyright infringement.

U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood, for the Southern District of New York, on Tuesday granted summary judgment in favor of the music industry’s claims that Lime Group, parent of LimeWire software maker Lime Wire, and founder Mark Gorton committed copyright infringement, engaged in unfair competition, and induced copyright infringement.

“The evidence demonstrates that [Lime Wire] optimized LimeWire’s features to ensure that users can download digital recordings, the majority of which are protected by copyright,” Wood said in her 59-page decision. “And that [Lime Wire] assisted users in committing infringement.”

This will likely cripple the service, if not kill the service outright. Now this won’t kill piracy services, but it will send a message of some sort to those who run these services.

At least that’s the theory.

This entry was posted on May 16, 2010 at 7:21 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Lawsuit, Limewire. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.