Yeah right...
News comes this week that Limewire has lost a big, big lawsuit over in the states, where the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) took LW creators to court over copyright infringement on behalf of the four major music labels it represents. The exact value of the damages is not yet known - though it the RIAA is claiming many many million ($150k for every infringing work - of which there are several million...), but the result is definitely in - and Limewire has lost big-time.
However, the consequences seem likely to be dire not only for Limewire itself, but also peer to peer file-sharing in general, since it seems clear that such software now represents a serious legal liability for its creators. With Limewire having been downloaded around 200m times (according to CNET) this would represent a huge - but somewhat fleeting one feels - victory for the US media companies.
Even if we remove Limewire from the equation (which supposedly accounts for 58% of peer-to-peer music file-sharing) - and then also extrapolate the consequences to the industry's best case scenario - i.e. total peer-to-peer eradication, then one might reasonably expect the RIAA, the labels they represent, will share quite the celebratory glass of champagne...
The morning after though might bring with it somewhat of a reality check - namely the fact that other methods of illegal file-sharing (such as torrents) would simply scoop up the ex peer-to-peer user group, and that actually the problem really lies in people's willingness to continue to download illegally - something which is hardly abated by briefly high-profile lawsuit victories (Napster and the Pirate Bay spring to mind as other examples of supposedly crucial breakthroughs for copyright associations - though time has shown that the actual consequences of such have been far less significant than the claimant parties would have liked).
This is the true nature of the task of the RIAA - locked into fighting a war they know they can't win (America's war on drugs springs to mind here), but nonetheless hoping that the next high profile 'bust' and the ensuing media focus on law enforcement strength will magic away the sheer unfathomable scale of the problem.
So, when the current victories against peer-to-peer and Limewire are announced in the press over coming weeks, I recommend taking those headlines (like my one above) with a pinch of salt; for a more accurate reflection of the significance of such events, check the stock index of the music labels involved. It should tell you something a little more realistic, that such developments are nice for recording companies - they represent a good day for them - but hardly the dawn of a new era without piracy...
Dejan Levi
