Music industry dogpiles on LimeWire with new lawsuit

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LimeWire continues to take a beating from the music industry, as eight members of the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) have filed a new lawsuit against the company. The organization announced the lawsuit during its annual meeting in New York, saying that LimeWire facilitated "pervasive online infringement" and that it affected everyone in the music industry.

The action from NMPA members—which include EMI, Sony, Universal, Warner, MPL Music Publishing, Peermusic, and the Richmond Organization—comes on the heels of an RIAA victory in a similar lawsuit brought against LimeWire. It was clear to the judge (and pretty much everyone else) that LimeWire's users were rampant copyright infringers, and Judge Kimba Wood said LimeWire had induced the infringement while doing nothing to mitigate the problem.

In the new lawsuit, NMPA members said that LimeWire should know that "the songs that make their illegal venture lucrative don’t appear out of thin air." Indeed, it's not just the musician you hear in a track that's hurt by a potential loss of sales: the NMPA represents a vast network of songwriters, publishers, performers, and record labels. "[LimeWire has] robbed every individual in that chain by selling their site as an access point for music and then refusing to properly license the music," said the NMPA in a statement.

LimeWire is already fighting to stay online thanks to the RIAA case, and the lawsuit from the NMPA members will only add to LimeWire's worries. The company argued earlier this month that shutting down wouldn't benefit the industry as a whole, and it hopes to continue working with the music labels on on a future product that would offer "boundless music portability."

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