Limewire Seeking All The Recording Industry's Secrets

While Limewire lost its lawsuit in a big way to the record labels (as pretty much everyone expected), the ensuing legal fight has remained quite interesting. We've already covered the surprising move by the judge to try to explore the "real costs" of file sharing to determine damages, and in response, it looks like Limewire is trying to drag tons of other companies into the fight. Limewire is claiming that just relying on the recording industry's own documents concerning "costs" and royalties isn't enough. This makes sense, given RIAA accounting practices. However, its efforts to get others to jump in may be pretty difficult as well. A court has already rejected a request to subpoena MediaDefender, one of the industry's favored "anti-piracy" outfits, and another court is reviewing Limewire's request to compel Amazon to hand over royalty information. The indications are that it's also seeking (or will seek) similar info from Apple. While I doubt the courts will let Limewire go through with most of these subpoenas, if they do happen to get the info, we could see quite the airing of dirty laundry and details concerning various music licensing deals -- which is the last thing the RIAA wants to see happen.

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Dido Joss Stone Majandra Delfino Maria Bello Jennifer Gareis