What Kind of Pirate Are You?

What’s the Latest Development?

Lime Wire founder Mark Gorton is being grilled in the Supreme Court and the hearing is revealing interesting aspects of Lime Wire’s view of its users. A Lime Wire pie chart showed that Gorton and his managers classified users into four groups. “Hardcore pirates” made up 25% of the service’s users. “Morally persuadable” users another 25%. “Legally unaware” users 20%, and those that “sampled” music were 30%.

What’s the Big Idea?

Lime Wire’s managers reported to Gorton that of these groups, the company could expect to convince only 20 percent to pay for music, Pomerantz told the jury. Which perhaps gives some insight into why millions of people possibly pirated billions of songs before Lime Wire was shut down. The Court has already determined that Gorton is liable for inducing mass copyright infringement but now the amount he must pay is being decided.