LimeWire Crushed in RIAA Infringement Suit

Gandhi was right. You just have to survive the "then they fight you" part.

Right, but look at how many other companies have lost in the courts, under similar circumstances. It isn't as though precedents have not already been set. The arguments about what users do with software are fine and well until you're on the receiving end of a multi-million dollar judgment.

If you know that your users are infringing copyrights, as Limewire surely does, and you facilitate that copyright infringement, as Limewire arguably does by providing P2P software principally to copyright infringers (as does seems empirically to be the case), and your product has little other purpose outside of copyright infringement (unlike, say, BitTorrent by itself), and you receive direct financial benefit from the actions of infringers, as Limewire does by charging ~$35 for their software, then you are exposed to a bunch of different vectors for indirect copyright infringement.

This is not a particularly complicated legal area, except to the extent that it necessarily skirts a bunch of grey areas in copyright law.

Have a read of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM_Studios%2C_Inc._v._Grokster....

for a summary of the relevant case.

I think the fact that a strong portion of their traffic is infringement is pretty damning on liability. While some people will use LimeWire for innocent behavior, or BitTorrent, let's face it, they was developed pretty much to facilitate infringement, gained their fame aiding infringement, and stayed afloat by aiding infringement.

I think the RIAA and MPAA are abhorrent, but I mean... you really don't see how they are liable? Just because they are slime doesn't mean people who infringe on their property rights are magically legally absolved.

except boeing doesn't encourage terrorists to hop aboard.