http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=21630

The case has finally been wrapped up with a jury deciding on damages against the service. The jury in this case opted to arrange a settlement between LimeWire and the RIAA legal team, which would call for LimeWire to pay $10,808 USD per track for the 9,715 tracks the RIAA claimed LimeWire infringed, for a total fine of $105M USD.

While that may sound like a lot, it's actually significantly less than the maximum fine of $150,000 USD per track the jury could have awarded for willful infringement. That would have resulted in a fine of $1.46B USD. The RIAA originally sought $150B USD in damages from LimeWire -- approximately15 times the music industry's total reported yearly income -- but was deterred by the minor triviality that LimeWire had nowhere near this amount of money.

I'm against piracy but damn man, that's alot of cash.

Recent studies have also shown that pirates are the biggest legal purchasers of music.
If it's not junk science then I guess the RIAA is really the one helping kill their own industry. When are they gonna listen? They need to ****ing adapt, business is different now.

In effect this means they can go out and steal copyrighted work of small independent labels and musicians. A compensation system is in place, but it's notoriously bad -- many musicians have struggled for years to get repaid, only to find their pleas fall on deaf ears.

At the end of the day the major labels' campaign of infringement and campaign against infringers in the public have a surprising amount in common. Both generate big money for the labels -- and both give nothing to artists.