Mark Gorton, Man Behind the Music Service; New York Times, 5/24/10

New York Times; Mark Gorton, Man Behind the Music Service:

"Mark Gorton is a confident guy. He’s confident about his ideas. He’s confident about his enthusiasms. And he’s confident that his successes — like making money on Wall Street and promoting alternative transportation in New York — provide a record that backs him up.

But that confidence faces a new test, Joseph Plambeck writes in The New York Times. Two weeks ago, a federal judge ruled that he and the popular file-sharing service he created, LimeWire, were liable for copyright infringement and could be forced to pay up to $450 million in damages.

Mr. Gorton, 43, says he did not think it would come to this point. He thought that the record industry, sometime since the lawsuit was filed in 2006, would come to appreciate his vision for the future of LimeWire — a paid subscription service providing unlimited downloads of licensed songs — and want to join forces instead of continuing litigation...

The Recording Industry Association of America, the industry group that managed the lawsuit on behalf of 13 record companies, said it thought he had willfully skirted the law, motivated by the money generated by the millions of users of LimeWire. Total revenue increased to an estimated $20 million in 2006 from $6 million two years earlier, according to the court ruling, much of it from a paid service that allowed for faster downloads.

“He thought with his cleverness that he could get away with it,” Mitch Bainwol, the association’s chief executive, said. “He’s the Bernie Madoff of Internet crime. He was thumbing his nose at the rule of law to profiteer enormously.”...

“People have a short memory, and they’ve gotten caught up in the mythology of P2P’s being run by ne’er-do-wells and eye-patch pirates,” said Fred von Lohmann, a senior staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who has represented some of the file-sharing services in copyright cases. (Mr. Lohmann was named in the ruling as having given legal advice to the company about how to protect itself from liability.)

“LimeWire was not a fly-by-night operation,” he said...

Mr. Gorton says he has tried to take that same strategy to the record labels to explain the new service he is proposing.

“I tell them to think of Woodstock,” he said. “The first one was free, but it ended up making the industry a lot of money and was a huge success. The second and third ones were very expensive for fans and were failures.”

But before he can hope to make any progress with the labels on his paid service, he will need to get the lawsuit behind him. And given the heated rhetoric from Mr. Bainwol and the record association, the coming negotiations may not be easy.

At a minimum, the record association says, LimeWire needs to shut the current service and Mr. Gorton needs to pay for damages out of his own pocket. A status conference with Judge Wood is scheduled for June 7.

Mr. Gorton says he knows that the music industry needs to alter the behavior of a generation of people who have grown accustomed to getting their music free.

Still, he says that LimeWire has a relationship with that generation that can help make the change. And he says he remains optimistic that, in the end, his idea will triumph.

“I don’t want to be on my deathbed thinking that I kept a bunch of musicians from making money,” Mr. Gorton said. “I have a lot of work to do to get my karma scores up.”"

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/mark-gorton-man-behind-the-music-service/?scp=2&sq=limewire&st=cse

RIAA pulls out of John Doe cases involving college students, Ars Technica, 1/19/09

Via Ars Technica, RIAA pulls out of John Doe cases involving college students:

"With these and other cases being wrapped up, there are only a couple of high-profile remnants of the industry's war against P2P users left on the agenda. One is the scheduled retrial of Jammie Thomas later this year; the other is the case against Joel Tenenbaum, who is being represented by Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson and a host of students. The RIAA feels confident about the evidence it has in the Thomas case and its chances for a victory in a second trial, but whether it has the stomach to actually go through with it remains to be seen. The Tenenbaum case is shaping up to be another PR nightmare with the RIAA, as Nesson recently convinced the presiding judge to stream the court proceedings online, a decision the RIAA is anxious to see overturned."

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20090119-riaa-pulls-out-of-john-doe-cases-involving-college-students.html

Music Industry to Abandon Mass Suits, Via Wall Street Journal, 12/19/08

Via Wall Street Journal: Music Industry to Abandon Mass Suits:

"After years of suing thousands of people for allegedly stealing music via the Internet, the recording industry is set to drop its legal assault as it searches for more effective ways to combat online music piracy.

The decision represents an abrupt shift of strategy for the industry, which has opened legal proceedings against about 35,000 people since 2003. Critics say the legal offensive ultimately did little to stem the tide of illegally downloaded music. And it created a public-relations disaster for the industry, whose lawsuits targeted, among others, several single mothers, a dead person and a 13-year-old girl.

Instead, the Recording Industry Association of America said it plans to try an approach that relies on the cooperation of Internet-service providers. The trade group said it has hashed out preliminary agreements with major ISPs under which it will send an email to the provider when it finds a provider's customers making music available online for others to take...

Meanwhile, music sales continue to fall. In 2003, the industry sold 656 million albums. In 2007, the number fell to 500 million CDs and digital albums, plus 844 million paid individual song downloads -- hardly enough to make up the decline in album sales."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122966038836021137.html

NewYorkMusicCopyrght.org: A Copyright Resource for New York Musicians

NewYorkMusicCopyrght.org: A Copyright Resource for New York Musicians:

http://nymusiccopyright.org/

Press Release from Public Knowledge, 10/27/08:

Public Knowledge today opened a new Web site dedicated to copyright issues as they affect musicians. The site, NYMusicCopyright.Org, is funded by a grant from the New York State Music Fund.

“This new site is dedicated to helping musicians understand a very complicated copyright landscape,” said Gigi B. Sohn, Public Knowledge president and co-founder.

On the site, users will find an introduction to copyright.

There are also sections on:

Music licensing
Sampling
Alternative methods of distribution
Remedies for copyright infringement
Device makers and infringement
Internet service providers and infringement
Peer-to-peer technologies
Digital rights management
Orphan works

“We hope musicians and those interested in the music industry will take advantage of this exciting new resource,” Sohn said."

http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/1810

Five easy steps to plug online music leaks, YahooNews.com, 12/7/08

Via YahooNews.com: Five easy steps to plug online music leaks:

"Recent new releases from rock bands Guns N' Roses, Metallica and AC/DC all found their way onto peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing networks before they reached the stores, proving that even the most closely guarded projects are vulnerable.

But it's not the end of the world. After angrily beating your head against the wall, there are several measures you can implement to mitigate the damage. Here are five recommendations not intended for artists or managers who deliberately leak their own material."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081207/en_nm/us_leaks

Judge says BU can't turn over infringers' IPs in P2P case, ARS Technica, 11/26/08

Via ARS Technica: Judge says BU can't turn over infringers' IPs in P2P case:

"The music industry's requests for more personal information regarding the identity of several accused file-sharers have been shot down by a federal judge. Judge Nancy Gertner quashed a subpoena this week in the infamous London-Sire v. Does 1-4 case, saying that the IP addresses of three anonymous Boston University students could not be handed over because the university had "adequately demonstrated that it is not able to identify the alleged infringers with a reasonable degree of technical certainty."

The legal system has been chipping away at the London-Sire case all year, starting this spring when Judge Gertner said that making files available on a P2P network does not equal copyright infringement."

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081126-judge-says-bu-cant-turn-over-infringers-ips-in-p2p-case.html

Legal Jujitsu in a File-Sharing Copyright Case, New York Times, 11/18/08

Via New York Times: Legal Jujitsu in a File-Sharing Copyright Case:

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/legal-jujitsu-in-a-file-sharing-copyright-case/?scp=1&sq=copyright&st=cse

RIAA v. The People: Five Years Later - Electronic Frontier Foundation, September 2008

RIAA v. The People: Five Years Later:

"On September 8, 2003, the recording industry sued 261 American music fans for sharing songs on peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing networks, kicking off an unprecedented legal campaign against the people that should be the recording industry’s best customers: music fans.1 Five years later, the recording industry has filed, settled, or threatened legal actions against at least 30,000 individuals.2 These individuals have included children, grandparents, unemployed single mothers, college professors—a random selection from the millions of Americans who have used P2P networks. And there’s no end in sight; new lawsuits are filed monthly, and now they are supplemented by a flood of "pre-litigation" settlement letters designed to extract settlements without any need to enter a courtroom.3

But suing music fans has proven to be an ineffective response to unauthorized P2P file-sharing. Downloading from P2P networks is more popular than ever, despite the widespread public awareness of lawsuits.4 And the lawsuit campaign has not resulted in any royalties to artists. One thing has become clear: suing music fans is no answer to the P2P dilemma."
http://www.eff.org/wp/riaa-v-people-years-later

Judge forces U of Oregon to cough up student data to RIAA - ars technica, 9/30/08

Judge forces U of Oregon to cough up student data to RIAA:
"A recent court ruling shows the difficulty that colleges caught up in the RIAA's war on student P2P users are facing. Late last week, Judge Michael R. Hogan quashed the RIAA's subpoena seeking identifying information on 17 University of Oregon students, but gave the labels another shot at getting the names of the students whom they believe were using P2P networks for copyright infringement."
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080930-judge-forces-u-of-oregon-to-cough-up-student-data-to-riaa.html