MESSAGE
| DATE | 2007-12-11 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] Fair Use stikes out again
|
Looks like the P2P conspiracy theories won’t get their day in court
LimeWire’s antitrust countersuit was thrown out last week after a
federal judge granted the RIAA’s motion to dismiss claims against
the company.
Many of the claims were dismissed “without prejudice,†which would
allow LimeWire’s parent company, Lime Group LLC, to file new lawsuits
under state courts.
Lime Group listed a wide variety of complaints against record labels and
the music industry, with the overall theme being that industry execs
conspired against LimeWire and others using a variety of schemes to
undermine P2P and P2P companies’ efforts to legitimate themselves.
Some of these complaints include:
* Claims that RIAA labels banded together to exclusively support
P2P client iMesh and its acoustic fingerprinting technology, while
simultaneously refusing to support a similar hash-based system
employed by LimeWire; when Lime Group sought the necessary hashes
to employ their technology, RIAA refused, instead demanding that
LimeWire acquire the rights to use iMesh’s fingerprinting tech.
* Further, if LimeWire insisted on using its hashing technology,
it would instead have to license a similar hash-based filtering
system from Altnet. * Music industry joint ventures MusicNet and
pressplay – two services that PC World dubbed “25 Worst Tech
Products of all Time†due to “stunningly brain-dead featuresâ€
– were nothing more than conduits for price-fixing and market
manipulation. (pressplay eventually became Napster 2.0 after its
2005 acquisition by Roxio.) * General claims of “unfair business
practices,†including threatening P2P users with litigation,
pressuring artists not to license works to P2P companies, and false
accusing LimeWire of promoting child pornography and piracy, among
other things.
In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Gerald Lynch wrote that most of Lime
Group’s claims “fail to allege an adverse effect on competition
market-wide.†Additionally, Lynch noted that record labels presented
over 100gb of data totaling 29 million pages worth of information for
their defense, while LimeWire failed to produce “any additional facts
it would plead that would enable it … to demonstrate the existence of
a conspiracy.â€
Lime Group’s countersuit was filed in response to the RIAA’s lawsuit
against the P2P client, which was launched just days after its $100
million legal victory over Kazaa.
RIAA executives applauded Lynch’s ruling, noting that Lime Group’s
countersuit was nothing but a diversionary tactic designed to “take
attention away from … [the] massive infringement that is the real
focus of this case.â€
--
http://www.mrbrklyn.com - Interesting Stuff
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://fairuse.nylxs.com DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
"Yeah - I write Free Software...so SUE ME"
"The tremendous problem we face is that we are becoming sharecroppers to our own cultural heritage -- we need the ability to participate in our own society."
"> I'm an engineer. I choose the best tool for the job, politics be damned.<
You must be a stupid engineer then, because politcs and technology have been attached at the hip since the 1st dynasty in Ancient Egypt. I guess you missed that one."
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