New Suit Against Limewire Could Total 15 Times Music Industry's Yearly Income

From DailyTech: Napster fell. Kazaa fell. And now the RIAA is waging an all out war to try to ensure Limewire follows in its P2P ancestors' footsteps.

Even as the move industry turns its efforts to suing thousands of BitTorrent users, the music industry is waging its own hard-fought war against filesharers. After a long and unprofitable legal crusade, the RIAA has largely turned its efforts to lobbying the government to take up the mantle of tracking and prosecuting filesharers.

With the upcoming Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement the RIAA may have scored its biggest victory -- making it a felony crime to develop P2P engines that become used to distribute infringed content.

Not content to wait for the vote on that measure, music labels have taken the fight to one of the most-downloaded filesharing engines, Limewire. Since the descent of Napster and Kazaa into legal and financial purgatory, Limewire has emerged as perhaps the most recognizable P2P engine.

The RIAA -- the music industry attack dog -- sue Limewire for $150,000 per infringed song way back in 2006. However, LimeWire founder Mark Gorton had frustrated the labels for almost four years. In May the labels secured a major victory -- a summary judgment against Limewire for copyright infringement, engaged in unfair competition, and induced copyright infringement.

Last month the RIAA accused Gorton of shifting his money to avoid paying damages from the case. They have appealed to the courts to try to have his assets frozen. They also filed a motion to have Limewire's services shut down.

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