LimeWire sued for an absurd$75 trillion

Mon 28th Mar, 2011 in International News

$75 trillion.

$75,000,000,000,000.

That’s what the major labels wanted in damages from LimeWire.

However, last week Manhattan federal district court judge Kimba Wood dismissed the $75 trillion damages request as “absurd” and noted that the major labels were suggesting a pay out that is “more money than the entire music recording industry has made since Edison’s invention of the phonograph in 1877.”

The case was filed back in August 2006 when the record companies brought action against LimeWire for copyright infringement, alleging that the website has allowed users to share and download unauthorized digital copies of more than 3,000 recordings.

The $75 trillion figure was reached because the record companies want compensation for every time a song was shared by LimeWire users; judge Wood has concluded that LimeWire can only be fined a single statutory fee for each copyright infringement.

To put $75 trillion in perspective: the World’s GDP for 2011 is estimated to me a mere $65 trillion, while the estimated total household income for the United States is expected to be roughly $5.7 trillion in 2011. And in completely unrelated news the North Korean government also demanded a $75 trillion pay out from the US government last year.