James Delahunty
28 Sep 2006 20:52
LimeWire has filed a counter claim today in response to a lawsuit brought against it by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) last month. The RIAA sued LimeWire for not complying with a cease and desist notification sent in September 2005 by the trade group. LimeWire's stance is that the RIAA is out to destroy P2P networks to gain complete control over digital music distribution online.
"[The RIAA’s] goal was simple: to destroy any online music distribution service they did not own or control, or force such services to do business with them on exclusive and/or other anticompetitive terms so as to limit and ultimately control the distribution and pricing of digital music, all to the detriment of consumers." the complaint reads.
Most of the complaint denied or claimed no knowledge to the majority of allegations made by the RIAA. LimeWire claimed that because of the RIAA's uncooperative position, it was very difficult to negotiate. It was expected that LimeWire would make changes like those made by iMesh and in the claim, LimeWire criticises iMesh and its working relationship with the RIAA.
"iMesh's and the RIAA's goal is to have these P2P companies concede, under the thread of expensive litigation, to sell their assets for essentially nothing, with the promise of a 'get out of jail free card' from the RIAA. In turn, the P2P company must simply turn-over its userbase (which is the single largest asset typically) to imesh so they can then force a conversion to the iMesh platform which, in turn, will lead to huge profits to iMesh and, of course, the Major Labels."
Sources:
Inquirer
Slyck
Thanks to The_Fiend for the News Submission.