Communications of the ACM
Idea Man of Limewire at a Crossroads
Ramin Talaie for The New York Times
Mark Gorton is a confident guy. He’s confident about his ideas. He’s confident about his enthusiasms. And he’s confident that his successes--like making money on Wall Street and promoting alternative transportation in New York--provide a record that backs him up.
But that confidence faces a new test. Two weeks ago, a federal judge ruled that he and the popular file-sharing service he created, LimeWire, were liable for copyright infringement and could be forced to pay up to $450 million in damages.
Mr. Gorton, 43, says he did not think it would come to this point. He thought that the record industry, sometime since the lawsuit was filed in 2006, would come to appreciate his vision for the future of LimeWire--a paid subscription service providing unlimited downloads of licensed songs--and want to join forces instead of continuing litigation.
“Perhaps I was naïve,” Mr. Gorton said in an interview last week at LimeWire’s office near Chinatown in Manhattan. “If I knew when the lawsuit started what I know now about the music industry, maybe we would have done something different.”
From The New York Times
View Full Article
No entries found