July 1, 2009 – the day the music wars started in earnest. Last night the guys from Dovecote Records, a small music label based in New York, were hanging out at their local bar. Employees from file sharing startup LimeWire showed up to have a party. There was confusion over the ownership of some pizza, and a riot almost ensued.
Woman: “Who the FUCK are you? And why are you eating our pizza?”
Kosuke and Paul look confused. Kosuke: Are you joking? Is this a joke?
Woman: No this is definitely NOT a joke. I want to know who you are and why you’re eating our pizza.
Kosuke: Well our friend came in and told us there was free pizza at the bar. We are. So. Sorry. It was a misunderstanding.
Woman: (with unbridled entitlement) This is a company party our CEO is here and you STOLE our pizza. Are you from out of town? Because let me tell you, NOTHING is free in New York City. Nothing is free… well maybe except for the condoms in Times Square.
Paul and Kosuke continue apologizing. They offer to pay for the two slices.
Woman: (didactically snobbish) We don’t want your money. No. Enjoy the pizza, but you can’t steal other people’s things. You can’t take what’s not yours
Again the duo continues their apologies. Kosuke tries to turn the situation around and befriend them.
Kosuke: What company do you guys work for?
Woman: We work for Limewire.
Kosuke’s eyes go wide. Anger festers in his pupils. Kosuke: Oh ok. Well I work at a record label so fuck you. You’ve stolen from us enough. (Bites pizza. Begins to walk away.)
Then things really got out of hand. One of the Dovecote guys grabbed a whole pizza and tried to run away with it. A Limewire engineer pursues and pours beer on him:
Paul’s anger builds. He stands up. Puts his bag on runs out the door, taking an entire pizza box with him. Matt T., a software developer at Limewire, tries to stop Paul by grabbing him and pouring beer all over his shirt, backpack, laptop, and pants.
We usually side against the labels on just about everything, but in this case we’re with Dovecote. Limewire is a mess and everyone knows it.
Whatever happens in the future with the battle between users and labels, we know one thing. July 1, 2009, the date of the Infamous 2009 LimeWire Pizza Fiasco, was when it wasn’t just about words and lawsuits any more. On that day, the music wars turned humorously physical.
Sounds like April Fool’s Day…
Wow, I used to be a big proponent of limewire due to the fact that much of the music I enjoy inst found on major labels and it was easier to find on lime wire. Now, after getting a handful of viruses in even less downloads from limewire I must say I am kind amused.
I tell everyone I know: “DON’T use Limewire”…because if you do it’s like asking, “can I have a virus please?”
Was perez hilton there? Someone should poor a beer on him.
God I hate it when people think they’re superior based on where they live. You gotta work a little harder than just move somewhere.
“You can’t just steal other people’s things”
Unless you have a viable business model.
+1
that is the funniest thing i have read all day. thanks for talking me off the ledge.
LOL, man I am in stitches LOL. One of the best post ever dude
I hate to be a “me too” sheep, but that was good.
Dang, now I want pizza. I don’t even LIKE pepperoni. Or limewire.
I don’t even use limewire. But I cannot side with those arrogant (insert favorite curse word starting with a B here) of the music industry.
“Oh ok. Well I work at a record label so fuck you. You’ve stolen from us enough.”
Wrong. Even if Limewire were a thief (they are not), they have not stolen as much as the music industry has swindled from the artists. (Insert favorite F word here) you back!
Bad point. You’re trying to pin all shortcomings from an entire industry on two guys at a small record label?
why didn’t someone tell me, I could of been there…damnit
You just made me crave pizza.
Goat Hill Pizza? I’ll met you there in 10 minutes
I’m glad someone posted it. That pizza photo triggered the hanker for a hunk o’ cheese.
WTF is this? TechCrunch fan fiction?
what this is is the day before a three day weekend. go outside and do something fun.
Lazy American. Want to relax after invading Iraq, now, do we?
it’s always nice to take a break between imperialistic splurges to enjoy some beer and a few fireworks.
What’s mine is yours. Now please put the gun down.
but the journey is the reward. it’s no fun unless you put up a fight.
Damn @arrington – your response to this idiot is the funniest damn thing I’ve read in a while! Happy 4th man – from an American living in Germany.
I knew there would be someone thinking “who do you think you are – Valleywag?” but the heck with that. This story was entertaining.
If you don’t have room in your life for entertaining, go away.
“WTF is this?”
This is a great anecdotal account of hypocrisy and irony around an issue that had dominated headlines for years.
This is lot more interesting than lawsuits.
And this is a fun story, in a rubbernecking sort of way.
And yes, its hilarious, and yes, it does read like a SNL sketch.
Which is all right with me…
It does not read like an SNL sketch. It’s actually funny.
Any this is what a bar fight between software engineers is like? How embarrassing. At least throw a damn punch.
Yeah, doesn’t every software team have at least one guy/girl who’s been doing kung fu for years? I’m thinking a good leg sweep to a fleeing perp would’ve retrieved some pizza, or a flat-palm strike to the lower jaw as the pizza perp turned:- didn’t anyone watch TMNT when they were younger?
Most entertaining TechCrunch post ever!
I’m with you: Go Dovecote!
Now if we could only get Limewire and the RIAA in the same octagon together….
What is Limewire?
Old crap software that needs to go the way of Bush, and the buffalo.
Should have punched the guy who poured beer all over him. Who runs away from a software engineer?
He didn’t want to contract a virus.
+1
Why not add up and down voting here? It mIght help with trolls. Though It might not when looking at Youtube – well a thought.
haha
+1
“Who runs away from a software engineer?”
I’m guessing another software engineer.
Hey, my wife is a software engineer…I run from her all the time!
Definitely should have punched the bloke who poured the beer over him.
What a waste of good beer. (Unless it’s Fosters – that’s just cat piss with a label).
Cheers from an Aussie who *KNOWS* beer is part of the 5 basic food groups.
Dovecote and Paul are heroes for the 21st century.
Is this true?
Anyway, if it is, the lady was the worst part of the story. Uncool.
the image of nerds battling hipsters is a nice way to end the week
Sell the movie rights to Reznor! Woooo, what a movie. Just add some lazer guns and it’s “Gold! Jerry! Gold!”
file sharing is theft, i really dont see what the great debate about the whole thing is. if you put a song on the internet and then allow 25000 to download it without paying the copywright owner, what else could it possibly be?
why should musicians bother to write music, if they arent going to get paid for it?
I can absolutely understand why that dovecote guy lost his temper, the wait that woman got uperty about a sodding pizza, while her entire career is built around screwing over the creative industry.
Is it theft when 25 people walk by my window and hear my CD player playing a copyrighted song? The copyright owner is not paid for those copies of the song either.
The debate is that the law is wrong, not the action. Lots of people do what they do regardless of the monetary compensation, and there are plenty of ways to make money in music without copyrights in place.
Don’t take my word for it. Nokia is the copyright owner of Symbian OS (for mobile phones), they’re going to start giving it away for free. Google’s already doing it. They’ve both figured out a way to make money off a free product, the music industry should do the same.
What if people, from junior high school forward, are taught that swapping music and movies is stealing? That easy crimes are still crimes? People are never told this from an authority figure and I think that is a big problem.
Although the music industry is notoriously abusive to artists, just because the abuse happens does not give people reason to steal music. That is a foul argument. I understand that more people think that way than I think, unfortunately.
The core problem is the myopic nature of businesses such as the music industry. When Napster first came out, the music industry executives should have met right then and there. Their approach should have been thus: “Exchanging music is the next monstrous problem, we need to establish downloading businesses immediately, and give people the greatest incentives to use our legitimate download services.” Unfortunately, there are many commissions on the sale of music, but they should have brought everyone with a stake to the table that year. We would have a much larger legitimate download economy now.
Look at Apple’s music sales. How many people turn away from illegal downloads because it is so easy and cheap to get any hit single they want? The download numbers are unbelievable.
The government and large corporations are all the same. They wait until they are nearly dead before they conclude, “We need a solution to this.”
What if, instead of misleading these kids, they were told that it is “copyright infringement”?
This is f**ing awesome. I wish that I could have been there. Listen up techno-geniuses! One of you needs to invent a time machine so that I can go back and be there with when this all went down and quietly go up to the women who started the whole thing and say some thing like…
“You know your fired right…hey! Are you going to eat that?”
Thank you SO much for posting this. Funny and makes a great point, particulalrly if it really happened….
Slimewire wants to have their pizza and eat it too.
What a bunch of dogs.
BEST POST THIS WEEK, Limewire = weak sauce
People still use LimeWire?
Yeah. Never lend people your laptop or they’ll install Limewire and download things and forget to clear out all the temporary files and you’re left wondering, “Should I use lysol or bleach?”
Limewire is pretty lame, but do you really want to take the label’s word for what happened? Really?
oh i’d love to post a rebuttal to the pizza incident from limewire. hope they send one.
Apology sir, but the answer is right there in the post — record label people are the ones who run away with pizzas they do not own.
Moral of the story: cannot call others “thieves” when you are yourselves thieves.
It is a well known fact that record labels are frequent targets of plagiarism and copyright infringement lawsuits. Just ask Gwyneth Paltrow’s husband (hint: Coldplay).
Hey, running away with somebody else’s pizza is totally legit.
I guess you didn’t go to college…mooching food off other people is one of the pillars of our education system
That reminds me, Satriani called, he wants his pizza back.
Where are the lawyers when you need them? As the former CEO of Morpheus, the former P2P file sharing app, former competitors to LimeWire and former defendants with the record labels, my advice to both LimeWire and Dovecote is to use this incident as the start of engaging in a dialog…or at least have lunch. Too bad there was no YouTube video — but it was cool that Devote gave LimeWire some promotion on their blog. Don’t they call that co-opetition.
This day won’t be forgotten – not in Canada anyways since they chose Canada day to start the pizza-n’-music wars
Too bad something like this happened in San Francisco with dramatic results last year.
http://www.sfga...2/BA6PVU3TD.DTL
i’m loving the storytelling aspect of this… nice narrative!
but i am surprised that they posted the F-bomb twice in their corporate blog….
I wouldn’t exactly call Dovecote’s blog “corporate”…
Michael, stop cursing in your posts.
Is it really a true story?
Hi.
You don’t know me.
Sincerely
The Labels
Stop judging us all on what old school lawyers have done in the past. I read this blog every single day because for the most part, it’s not ignorant. Your posts about labels however, are ignorant.
hahaha funny
Pictures or it didn’t happen! (POIDH)
A nice, humorous ironic post before the holiday weekend. Now like Mike said, go out and DO something
Buy those Dovecote guys a pizza if you can.
I’ll donate a few bucks.
This is the funniest article I’ve read today. Thank you!!
So what’s the problem with limewire? Sharebear isn’t all that great either. But where else can you share naked pics of your sister with everyone.
if you are sharing naked pics of your sister, stop reading tech crunch and go to the doctor for some help
hey man, you don’t know, eattrn might have a hot sister.
LOL! Good call!
Greg Bildson was COO/CTO of LimeWire when I interviewed him for a Forrester report on file sharing a few years back. In the course of the interview I suggested that people might post the premium version of LimeWire’s software on a file-sharing site, where others could get it for free.
Bildson told me he was “shocked” that others might take something as valuable as software, with all the work that went into it, and post it on a file sharing site. Seemed just a bit hypocritical to me at the time . . .
That’s exactly what I did: Downloaded limewire and used it to download limewire pro. Now that is what I call justice.
You sure showed them!
I must confess, I did the same.
Dude,
How many times are you going to repeat this mistaken comment of yours?
-greg
Twice in six years, Greg. And it was your name I got wrong the first time, not the comment you made.
Good to know you’re listening.
I can’t say I work for Limewire but a friend of mine does and he tells me that the woman in the story was a programmer’s girlfriend.
Also, anyone else notice this? http://tr.im/qH2x
Hilarious — Dovecote sells on the LimeWire Store. This whole thing is marketing genius on Dovecote’s part, even if their business model is living a lie in the age of perfect digital copies. This little accidental spat is probably the best business move they ever made.
This story is funny, and well for LimeWire to have stuff stolen when thats what they promote is a small slice of jutice…. What I find wierd about the story is at first the Dovecote Records people did not know they were taking pizza from LimeWire folks.?
this is the funniest thing i have read in a while
i say shame on both parties, here. while dumping a beer on someone may be a an overreaction for sure, running off with people’s pizza doesn’t exactly fall out of the “jackassery” category. and, of course, this is the label’s side of the story – like any story, there are always many sides. just saying.
also, all of you are talking down about music piracy, when i’m almost certain that at least 95% of you steal music yourselves. hypocrisy all around, in this situation.
also, as pointed out by stephen above, limewire store does appear to sell music from that label. i also doubt such a tiny label is seriously affected by limewire anyway. i’d be more concerned about 13 year old girls stealing kanye’s latest than anything.
no, 13 year old girl are absolutely not putting a big hole in kw pockets. this dove?indie?who label, they might feel it.
john – what are you basing you idea that tiny businesses operating on the borderline of ’scraping-a-living / going-under’ (all the tiny labels I have worked with, pretty much) are hurt less than the majors?
as has been stated before, the meme of ‘i love music but hate the music industry therefore I DL music for free to show my anti-corporate stance’ is so attractive that it is now applied to ALL labels of every size. not good.
Where was his laptop while he was running away holding a box of pizza?
logged onto limewire steal’in stuff.
Haha, Arrington, you are on a roll today, my friend.
pure gold, this is a funny story with a funny vid added!
Brilliant
LOL @ 0:25
One of my favorite movie moments: the ad this is based on came on in a theatre I was in and when it said “You wouldn’t steal a car” someone in the audience shouted out, “I would if I could f&*#ing download it!”
haha…lol……..
Thanks Arrington, this is one of my favorite stories of the past year.
IRONY! Hilarious Irony.
Ever notice how much a laptop resembles a pizza box?
When the Dovecote guys came over and opened the pizza sitting by us, it was an understandable mistake. It was also understandable that some very drunk people were going to give you some shit for it. But it’s an honest mistake, no harm no foul, enjoy the pizza. We couldn’t possibly accept any money for it, go ahead, eat it. Go on, it’s delicious. Fresh from the Pizza Shop.
Give a man a piece of pizza and he’ll be full for a night. Stop him from taking the whole box and he’ll…write a blog entry whining about you? We’re nice guys; had you asked for more pizza we probably would have given it to you. The person you argued with doesn’t even work for LimeWire.
I can’t speak to what happened afterwards, but I don’t have any particular ill will towards Dovecote. Enjoy the free publicity at our expense.
* I do not speak for LimeWire, just a bystander
yeah ok…….
That’s pretty funny.
Though, as someone who used to work at Kazaa we always got shouted beers by the small labels because they used P2P as a promotional tool. Or something like that. I neither confirm nor deny anything (and everything).
No way this really happened.
label found out they were gonna be there and went down to cause a scene.
Exactly. Coincidences these days are like tooth fairies. This was too perfect a setup.
Still an entertaining story though. The programmers’ “fight” execution is totally believable. probably afraid they bruise their fingers, or break their hands.
It would be even funnier if this lady was the PR spokesperson of LimeWire. Probably she organized this pizza for her beloved CEO because sleeping to the top didn’t work – now she tried it with pizza.
if LimeWire still relevant these days?
It’s always fun to see, that the non-relevant companies/peoples are always the biggest douches. It’s the same with these nouveau riche guys that should still drive with their ugly camper and drinking cheap canned bear instead of leasing a new ferrari each month, eating lobster (in the “hip place” below my window with all the other douchebags) and pretending to be upper class.
Next time this Paul from dovecot should beat them up instead of grabbing a pizza
)
So any woman in a high position is automatically “sleeping to the top”? Sickening.
thanks for this post – true to form we are social beings, and wow this was so perfect. wow.
Mike, you left out the best line.
“Paul: Well when are you going to figure out how to download pizza into my stomach.”
in response to
“Random Other Woman: (rehearsing the spiel corporate made her commit to memory in case she bumps into Lars Ulrich) We can’t control what’s being shared by our users. If our users decide to share something illegal we can’t stop them… (trails off)”
Wow. I thought everyone stopped using Limewire in 2001.
That is disgusting. I can’t forgive Limewire for attitude of that sort.
I uninstalled. You’ve lost me as a customer, Limewire.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!
great story! sad that there is no video documenting this… where are all those new 3GS when you need them?
Rematch at the noodle bar!!!
Haha that was great. And you are right, limewire is a mess!