Today eight members of the NMPA, among them the four major record companies, have again filed suit against Mark Gorton, founder of the popular p2p file sharing service Limewire.
Not surprisingly the claim once again is one of copyright infringement on a large scale.
As the plagued file sharing service is doing its best to convince the district judge, not to shut down the service, after a previous major victory of the RIAA, this new claim could not have come at a worse time.
The group of publishers made a request to the court, to order Limewire to cease violating their copyrights, and also filed a claim for $ 150,000 in damages, for each music file that was intentionally infringed, as well as $30,000 for all other types of infringements.
To date the amount of violating files trades through the service goes well into the hundreds of millions, so in case the plaintiffs win the amount to be awarded would be staggering.
While the RIAA has spent well over four years, doing legal battle with the P2P service, the timing for this new claim is typical to say the least, and makes one wonder why now?
According to the president of the NMPA, this is not a matter of piling case upon case, but a simple attempt from the music industry, to claim what is rightfully theirs, in order to divide this money amongst the 2500 companies and songwriters the organization represents.
In a response Limewire stated that it is in the process of recreating the service, and turning it into a legal one.
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