Judge Calls Record Companies' Request for $75 Trillion in Damages 'Absurd' in Lime Wire Case

[The Straight Story]

Manhattan Federal Judge Kimba Wood Calls Record Companies' Request for $75 Trillion in Damages 'Absurd' in Lime Wire Copyright Case

Does $75 trillion even exist? The thirteen record companies that are suing file-sharing company Lime Wire for copyright infringement certainly thought so. When they won a summary judgment ruling last May they demanded damages that could reach this mind-boggling amount, which is more than five times the national debt.

Manhattan federal district court judge Kimba Wood, however, saw things differently. She labeled the record companies' damages request "absurd" and contrary to copyright laws in a 14-page opinion.

The record companies, which had demanded damages ranging from $400 billion to $75 trillion, had argued that Section 504(c)(1) of the Copyright Act provided for damages for each instance of infringement where two or more parties were liable. For a popular site like Lime Wire, which had thousands of users and millions of downloads, Wood held that the damage award would be staggering under this interpretation. "If plaintiffs were able to pursue a statutory damage theory predicated on the number of direct infringers per work, defendants' damages could reach into the trillions," she wrote. "As defendants note, plaintiffs are suggesting an award that is 'more money than the entire music recording industry has made since Edison's invention of the phonograph in 1877.'"

While Wood conceded that the question of statutory interpretation was "an especially close question," she concluded that damages should be limited to one damage award per work.

http://www.law.com/jsp/cc/PubArticleCC.jsp?id=1202486102650&Manhattan_Federal_Judge_Kimba_Wood_Calls_Record_Companies_Request_for__Trillion_in_Damages_Absurd_in_Lime_Wire_Copyright_Case

[sakabatou]

1. The damages are absurd.

[habitual]

2. well, now we all know that when they cry about losing money

to piracy and provide all these numbers to show how much they are losing... that they are pulling those numbers right out of their asses with absurd calculations of loss.

not like we didn't already know this.

[BzaDem]

3. I don't think this is a question of loss -- it looks like they were computing statutory damages

which exist (at a set range) even if there was no loss, according to statute.

Though it is definately the case that their theory of aggregating damages here was absurd. I think it's safe to say that if one's theory of damages would result in an award that is 5 times the GDP of the United States, there is probably a problem with the theory.

[n2doc]

4. Why aren't the pols complaining about "greedy litigants" here?

Sounds worse than the ambulance chasers. Instead we get one of them for a position in the Obama Administration.

[pintobean]

5. Huh.... record companies still exist?