RIAA Wants $72 Trillion in Damages From LimeWire

Limewire RIAA Wants $72 Trillion in Damages From LimeWire

The bitter court dispute between the now defunct file-sharing site LimeWire and the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) took another dramatic turn today, when the RIAA tried claiming that the amount they are owed due to copyright infringement is a staggering $72 trillion!

Judge Kimba Wood, who is presiding over the case, said that they had asked for an “absurd” amount, and said in recent report: “An award based on the RIAA calculations would amount to ‘more money than the entire music industry has made since Edison’s invention of the phonograph in 1877.’”

According to the A.V.Club.com about the case, the estimated wealth of the entire world combined is approximately $60 trillion – perhaps the RIAA should have thought about this before putting in such a preposterous figure. Maybe they are just aiming ridiculously high because they know they are going to get hard-balled and brought down to a much more realistic amount.

Regardless of the fact that the RIAA are unlikely to get anywhere near the $72 trillion they initially requested, it does look like LimeWire are going to end up seriously out of pocket once all is said and done. Statutory fines for infractions like the 11,000 that LimeWire were found guilty of committing come up at around $150,000 each. When you do the math, that’s a hell of a lot of money!

Updated: According to Liz Kennedy, the Director Of Communications for the RIAA, the case between LimeWire and the RIAA was “already settled for $105 million last year.” A.V.Club.com cited a story run by both NME and ComputerWorld were, in fact, inaccurate.