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The story behind the Most EXPENSIVE lawsuit in history!

Slidebean
6 min readSep 1, 2021

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What was Limewire? This software was part of the P2P revolution in the early 2000s, but its story touches on many topics, including legal issues and controversies.

Imagine facing a lawsuit for $75 trillion. You read that right: $75 trillion. As a reference, the US’s GDP in 2019 was $21.433 trillion. So clearly, someone pissed off the wrong crowd. And that someone was Limewire.

Limewire was one of the most popular P2P clients in the 2000’s. It allowed millions to download music, images, software, and videos, as well. But its legacy is also tainted with darkness. The network no longer operates and, still, we can take out valuable lessons from it. So, in this article, we’ll dive into the rise and fall of Limewire.

How Limewire started

Mark Gorton is a creative man. In seventh grade, for example, he created a scale model of his school. Why? He wanted to. And, music wasn’t in his sights. His background instead was a mix of engineering, trading, and investment.

His relationship with file transfers came as a business opportunity. But, first, let’s quickly talk about the Peer-to-Peer system or P2P.

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