Dear Record Companies
From West Indian block parties to underground ciphers, piracy has always been around...
via The Register:
The music industry is sticking to a self-valuation that has been rejected by various courts and has now been described as “absurd” by a New York judge.
Judge Kimba Wood has handed down an opinion in the LimeWire damages case that challenges the industry’s belief it could be owed more than the entire global GDP for one year.
After LimeWire lost the case last year, the trial moved into the damages phase, with hearings starting next May. In an opinion (pdf) [1] published ahead of the damages hearings, Judge Kimba Wood revealed that the record companies, seeking statutory damages against the music-sharing service, are seeking damages predicated on the “number of direct infringers per work” – leading to a damages claim of as much as $75 trillion dollars (according to Wikipedia, total global GDP is around $69 trillion)".
You know an industry is in the middle of a flux when it grossly overvalues itself and insists that the rest of humanity respect its inflated self-image. It just so happens that this overvaluation is a constant staple of the music industry, where fickle fans, new technology and constantly changing winds make an accurate understanding damn near impossible. The music industry continued that trend over the past two weeks when a gang of you record companies decided to hold Limewire accountable for $75 trillion over its enabling of file-sharing. I almost gagged when I saw that figure. $75 TRILLION?!?!?! Since when has the music industry been worth more than the entire world's GDP? Seriously... I like music, and I'm sure the rest of the world does too, but not that much.
And to boot, you're suing Limewire of all companies. If you guys really had your hand on the pulse of the music industry, you'd know Limewire was played out after my 9th grade year (2002, if you must know). Additionally, if you were really paying attention, you would've been up on the online music grind from jump, so that you could've had a stake in it. Torrents, sharing websites and iTunes beat you to the punch and now you're on the outside looking in, trying to bust the windows. Now that you're behind the curve, it's like you're trying to put a four-alarm fire out with a water gun. Hell, now the blogs are running the game, giving away your artists' music (at least in hip-hop; can't speak for every genre) and all you guys can do is shut down onSMASH for a couple of weeks.
If your preposterous claim against Limewire is a sign of anything, it's that the little man always has a one-up on the corporation because the corporation is too focused on the profit rather than the product. That you guys are finally getting your day in court is too little, too late, and the judge handling your case proved that when he called your claim 'absurd'. As a matter of fact, that's just the first in a long list of words I have for your general greed and lack of insight into your own business. Either way, I and the rest of the bajillion Generation-Y music fans will somehow find a way