LimeWire, the once-popular Gnutella-based P2P file-sharing application, has settled one of the copyright infringement lawsuits filed last year by over 30 different music industry publishers and record companies, but the companies legal woes are still far from over.
Details of Tuesday’s court settlement have not yet been released, but reports indicate that claims against the now-defunct service, as well as those against founder Mark Groton, have been dismissed.
"A settlement was reached," a spokeswoman for the National Music Publishers Association told reporters." The parties worked hard to achieve a settlement that is a good result for all involved."
While that may seem like good news for Groton, the legal deliberations seeking damages over LimeWire’s business model have only just begun.
A separate case stemming from Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) allegations that the service “intentionally encouraged infringement” has been scheduled for trial in May. The RIAA won a permanent injunction against the P2P service last October after a long-standing battle that had begun in 2006, claiming that as much as 93% of the content posted by users was pirated. Damages claimed by record labels will be assessed during the May trial, and could total in the billions of dollars according to TorrentFreak.
Groton had originally intended to re-open LimeWire as a legal subscription-based service, however those plans were scrapped soon after allegations surfaced that a LimeWire employee may have been behind a LimeWire: Pirate Edition that surfaced in November. Though company representatives denied all involvement with the Pirate edition, the damage inflicted upon the company’s reputation was too great to overcome.
Though the RIAA has succeeded in their quest to shut down LimeWire, plenty of alternatives remain for former users, much to the antipiracy organization’s chagrin. If the labels win their day in court in May (and it looks likely that they will), we may see many more of these services targeted later this year.
