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Final LimeWire court hearing to assess financial impact of file-sharing on the record industry
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 17 December 2010
Ascertaining the actual tangible damage to the record industry of illegal downloading is tricky, with wildly differing estimates coming from various research reports on the issue depending on whether researchers have a pro or anti file-sharing agenda.
As previously reported, lawyers for file-sharer Jammie Thomas are trying to have her damages payment cut from $1.5 million to nothing on the basis the record industry who sued her have failed to prove exactly what damage her specific downloading did to the labels, over and above depriving them of the $24 they would have got had she bought the songs she downloaded on iTunes.
When it comes to something like LimeWire, where you’re talking about involvement in the downloading of millions of tracks by millions of people, you could argue that more generic statistics about the value of the millions of tracks acquired via file-sharing or the levels to which record sales have declined in the last ten years are more relevant to the debate.
Except that we know that every illegally downloaded track does not equal a lost sale, and there will be other factors in record companies’ declining revenues, not least the falling price of CDs and wider economic recession. So, how do you calculate the tangible damage caused to the wider record industry as a result of the LimeWire P2P file-sharing software having ever existed?
Well, that’s the challenge facing a judge and jury in the US as the record industry’s claim for billions in damages against the soon to be defunct digital firm goes to court. And this week the judge overseeing the case, Debra Freeman, agreed with LimeWire’s lawyers that the record labels should have to provide much more detailed information about the sorts of profits hit singles and albums would be expected to generate.
The US record industry had argued LimeWire’s demands for stats and figures were unreasonable, but Freeman – to an extent – does not concur. According to the Hollywood Reporter, she wants an in-depth discussion on the financial impact of LimeWire on the record industry as part of the upcoming court hearing, looking at figures relating to 240 singles and 60 albums (a third picked by the labels, a third by LimeWire and a third at random).
Depending on how this turns out, it could make the final chapter of the LimeWire story interesting – on an academic level at least. Whether it can really answer the question – what has the cost of the P2P phenomenon been – remains to be seen. Probably not.
