LimeWire Comes Under RIAA Fire

LimeWire representatives did not take an official stand and made no comments following a RIAA lawsuit accusing the company of intermediating music piracy. RIAA initiated legal action against the New York-based Lime Group alleging that it supports music piracy through the file sharing services it facilitates through the LimeWire Website. Encouraged by a recent $115 million settlement with Kazaa p2p network, the RIAA is claiming financial damages of $150,000 for every unlicensed shared file.

"Despite numerous efforts to engage LimeWire, the site's corporate owners have shown insufficient interest in developing a legal business model," the Recording Industry Association of America stated. "While other services have come productively to the table, LimeWire has sat back and continued to reap profits on the backs of the music community. That is unfortunate and has left us no choice but to file a lawsuit to protect the rights and livelihoods of artists, songwriters and record label employees."

RIAA accuses LimeWire of building and profiting from a business model structured on the trading of pirated materials while supporting illicit file sharing among its users by not endorsing active measures to block the transfer of copyrighted materials.

Sony BMG, Virgin Records and Warner Bros. Records are at the top of RIAA's antipiracy efforts against LimeWire that have materialized in a federal lawsuit U.S. District Court in New York. "LimeWire is devoted essentially to the Internet piracy of plaintiffs' sound recordings," the record companies alleged in the suit.