LimeWire to Block Copyrighted Work 295
An anonymous reader writes "Slyck is reporting that LimeWire is working on new code that will block non-licensed material. The new code checks to see if shared material is licensed, if it is not, the LimeWire client will politely inform the user, 'LimeWire can't determine if one or more files have been published under a suitable license. These files will not be shared.'" From the article: "Approximately 3 to 5 days ago, LimeWire developers began working on two new branches, cc_reverify_interval-branch and cc-publish-branch. The code in the first branch works to verify that every file shared has a license. If this is not the case, the file will not be shared. The second branch is for publishing one's own work without a license. According to the release notes, individuals can attach a Collective Commons license if the work is either their own or have permission to distribute the work ... According to a LimeWire beta tester who informed Slyck of this news, this feature is already complete. Developers are simply waiting for the signal to integrate these branches with the main branch, providing Mark Gorton, CEO of LimeWire, decides to go through with this."
hmm. (Score:5, Insightful)
keyword: unlicensed (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Other clients on the same network won't by default implement their solution
2. One can still download files from other clients (how else can you determine if the content is legal?) and other networks
Although this might be considered a victory for the other side, it seems that for any given victory there are 10 new file sharing programs out there.
Furthermore, straight from their website:
"If an individual shares an unlicensed MP3 file, the LimeWire client will display the following message and prevent its distribution:"
How will the process go to determine if a mp3 file has a license?
Maybe the only thing that this will achieve is destroy all filesharing of 'unlicensed' (READ: not the latest 'licensed'/paid/newest-format content) and destroy their client-base in the process too?
not a bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
This means LimeWire is not encouraging nor participating in violation of copyright.
Thus Limewire hopes to survive the lawsuits to come.
Ok, and (Score:5, Insightful)
Internet: Censorship=Damage (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:hmm. (Score:5, Insightful)
is there anything that prevents you as sharing "HALF LIFE 2 REALLY WORKS PLAYS ONLINE.EXE" as your own work though?
You can also change file names, like make an W3Works.exe.doc, change all ownership info. Then compress the file to W3Works.exe.doc.rar with a text file of instructions in the rar! I think the whole idea of 'we-won't-let-you-share-copyright-work' is to get the RIAA off Limewire's back and let them blame the users for what happens afterwards.
but what about..... (Score:2, Insightful)
What about projects like shareaza?
are hundreds of OS contributers going to get a suppoena too?
Collective commons? (Score:3, Insightful)
What's that, like the creative commons, but by the Borg?
(For the record, 2 seconds of search the article shows it was indeed supposed to be creative commons.)
Re:keyword: unlicensed (Score:5, Insightful)
How will they differentiate between The Hunchback of Notre Dame and something that is not public domain and restrictive? How will they differentiate between a short story from a nobody author who is gladly sharing his work with the latest crappy Anne Rice eBook?
And further, why should anyone have to? You should have to go out of your way to say "THIS IS MY WORK - IT HAS THESE CERTAIN RESTRICTIONS ON IT" versus "THIS IS MY WORK - DO WHATEVER YOU WANT WITH IT". I know this isn't how it legally goes, but come on. And if you're not the original author, how do you make available such a license and choose it? The dude who wrote Cinderella isn't alive anymore, so the story of cinderella can't be shared, since there's not necessarily a license on any work from it I might use?
Is this where the future is headed? Everyone must license every single thing they ever play, write, direct, say - whatever? Every creative work MUST have a license or it will become unusable and unsharable? Shoudn't the onus be on the person who wants to leverage the restrictive licenses on their works to do so? Why should I have to go through the trouble of using some digital licensing scheme just to put out something for free that a billion dollar industry has to go through to make money? It seems the hard work should be theirs - not mine.
Oh - and how much is it going to cost to implement some sort of digital scannable license, I wonder?
There's a fundamental problem with this... (Score:5, Insightful)
The system cannot know if I have a license. Moreover, if I do put a work up for distribution, there's the problem that they have to take my word for it that I have not lied about the terms under which I am distributing it.
Also, typically licenses can also be dependent on the type of use. How are they to know how I am using something I downloaded? In many cases, it may not be immediately clear if distribution in this manner is permissible...
Sure, they are trying to cover their collective butts, but from what? There's no reason to believe that such a superficial system that doesn't mirror any material aspect of copyright law is going to be considered due diligence in policing themselves.
The last thing we need (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ok, and (Score:5, Insightful)
So yeah, if limewire wants to commit suicide, let them be my guest...
Only the Open will survive (Score:3, Insightful)
On the other hand P2P as a distribution system for legit purpose is gaining massive momentum, just look at Red Swoosh, iFilm and IGN.com are using it and the download speed are impressive, without hogging you connection like BT will do.
Bottom line, this move is just a trick to try to survive a little longer from LimeWire, too bad it is going to backfire...
Re:keyword: unlicensed (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. So fight the rearguard action here (http://www.eff.org/ [eff.org] and subvert the new order here (http://www.creativecommons.org./ [www.creativecommons.org]
Neither is going to take more time than typing that missive did.
Freedom and privacy dying at every turn (Score:4, Insightful)
Governments across the globe are getting more and more intrusive into everyone's private lives, and more and more cavalier about their violations of personal liberty and disregard for the dangers such violations create....with cheers of approval from people who "have nothing to hide."
It makes me very sad.
Open Source (Score:2, Insightful)
Child Pornography (Score:5, Insightful)
If they spent the same amount of time preventing Child pornography instead of music that is under RIAA's domain... well, I'm sure you get my point. What I'd like to know is why is the country that I live in more concerned about someone downloading copyrighted music than child pornography?
I know people are arrested all of the time for it, but music makes more news, it's kind of sad I think.
Re:but what about..... (Score:2, Insightful)
people still use gnutella? (Score:3, Insightful)
There is so much music out there in single serving format (I still think they should have $1 CD downloads..Britney Spears..yea her CDs would be worth about a dollar). Although the DRM stuff is annoying, at least it shows that the music industry is trying to adapt to what consumers really want.
Gnutella protocols are really goind the way of the casual user who used their machine to browse the internet, use e-mail, download porn and play video games. They're more than happy to pay 99 cents (or however much it's gone up to now) to download DRMed music.
The true people who copy tons of illegal software and copyrighted music will move on to Bittorrent or continuing using usenet and irc fservs. They'll be the next target for the RIAA of course, but stuff keeps moving fast enough that nerds, audiophiles and the such will be a few steps ahead of them.
On to other ramblings...
Re:Freedom and privacy dying at every turn (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope, it's not just you; the world is seriously fucked, at least from a civil liberties/privacy perspective.
The good news is that the pendulum will inevitably swing the other way; the bad news, of course, is that this won't be happening in our lifetime.
Re:Maybe not (Score:4, Insightful)
"The RIAA is evil because the websites tell me so, so I'm going to ensure that System of a Down doesn't get paid today, which somehow is good for System of a Down!"
That's not the argument. The argument is that file sharing of copyrighted works improves sales of good products. My own anecdotal evidence would be that I'd never have found my favorite music group if I hadn't been sent an MP3 by a friend on the 'Net.
Re:Ok, and (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:In other news... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not so sure. The article says that the application will prevent *sharing* of files, but "sharing" is disabled by scanning files on the hard drive and marking some as illegitimate. But there's no mention of to-be-downloaded files, nor of other files on the Gnutella network. So it may *increase* usage in two ways:
1) Parents allow children to download music off of Limewire since that music now "must be legal".
2) The normal copyright infringers use Limewire to establish plausible deniability. Limewire filters illegal files and the files were downloaded from Limewire (albeit through the unfilitered Gnutella network or using files with publishing authorization that is forged), so the files must be legal and they can't be held accountable since they acted in good faith.
In reality, this is just opening Limewire up to even more liability.
On the damage this will do to Creative Commons (Score:3, Insightful)
CC on all things shared, and
taint CC's license.
You will hear the cry
from the RIAA, "You
see? CC's for thieves!"
Re:The last thing we need (Score:1, Insightful)
Required? (Score:1, Insightful)
and Open Source (Score:3, Insightful)
So people can go to other networks, or can go to other clients on the same network, or can just tweak the client. This seems a bit silly. The only thing I can see this doing is driving people from the official LimeWire client to unofficial ones, ensuring that the people who make the client will be getting even less money.
It's about civil disobedience. (Score:5, Insightful)
B: There are noninfringing reasons to trade copyrighted works, and there are illegal but valid reasons to trade copyrighted works. For example, there was a movie recently that many, many people recommended that I see, but had been unavailable through traditional retail channels for many years. So I just downloaded it from a P2P network. I've discovered a lot of German Trance and other musical acts through P2P networks that I can't even buy over traditional retail channels, even importers. I've found many, many acts that I would not otherwise have been exposed to, from Argentine Tango ripped from Vinyl to obscure local acts. I've just got a Russian version of Hamlet that you would never find in Suncoast, and culturally significant games from the mid 80's that are completely unavailable even on Ebay. I've downloaded television shows from foreign countries as well as ones that my local cable monopoly simply decided weren't worth carrying.
I think the reason why P2P networks are so revered is that they're our only counterweight in the encroachment against our rights. The content industries control Television, Movies, Radio, most local concert venues, the Congress, and are getting protection schemes into television and playback hardware. They've been convicted of monopoly price fixing, yet didn't change a single practice. They lie about profits to avoid paying their artists. They've slipped stupid things into laws that make it illegal for people to describe Rot-13. They've ensured that copyright never expires, that nothing ever returns to the public domain. They own the culture that is imprinted in your brain.
What do we have as citizens? Civil disobedience via P2P. Want to find good new music? You could to go the Clear-Channel owned radio stations who use technically illegal payola from the major record labels to decide what gets played... or you can go on P2P networks, download a whole bunch of stuff, and see what you like. Want to listen to your music on-the-go? You could buy a CD, only to find that you can't convert it to MP3's to listen on your iPod, or you could just go online and download the fscking MP3's. Want to use a snipped from The Song of the South [songofthesouth.net] or from Der Fuhrer's Face [imdb.com] in a lecture on popular responses to cultural crisis? Since Disney is pretending that neither of these historical films exist, your only recourse is to go on P2P and get it yourself.
I'm saying this as a person in the content generation industry... I help make videogames for major publishers. And piracy of games I've worked on has happened on P2P networks. Yet I still feel that the open nature is an important counterbalance to traditional distribution networks which have become dominated by a few small, self-serving companies. Culture remaining in control of the people is far more important than a slight sales loss to a highly profitable convicted monopolist.
Will this really affect anyone? (Score:2, Insightful)
What I think would be really good would be if someone could get a new law slipped in under the radar, whereby you could quite legally make your own CD, as long as you paid the appropriate fee to the copyright holder {in effect, Non-Discriminatory Licencing: if you give one person a licence to copy a work, you have to licence it to everyone on the same terms}. Even if this only applied to one region, there would still definitely be an obvious, legitimate application for P2P
Re:Freedom and privacy dying at every turn (Score:2, Insightful)
The first thing that popped into my head when I read that question?
This quote:
(from the introduction to The Power of Nightmares [wikipedia.org])
They want us to be frightened little sheep who'll do whatever we're told without question (those in power, not the Slashdot editors, who listens to them anyway?
TFA and /. responses unenlightening (Score:2, Insightful)
Would you be able to upload these free (as in speech and beer) MP3s [posamist.com]? This is a local band who publishes their own songs, Joe makes all his money making music (although Jeff has a daytime job). This is quality stuff, and this is one of hundreds if not thousands of indie bands who make their money performing and use the MP3s as a carrot to get you to their shows.
This is the kind of music MP3s and file sharing was made for - none of the RIAA's talentless, restricted, locked down pop drivel. Yet it seems from the (admittedly short on real details) article that you won't be able to share them, because there's no "license."
Google for "'free MP3s' Crawford'" for a link to Michael Crawford's list of thousands of MP3s teh artists want shared. Are any of these "properly licensed?"
And what about Public Domain works? A work in the public domain has and needs no license. Very few recordings made before the middle 1950s or early 1960s were copyrighted. Tape recorders were rare and expensive, particularly high fidelity mechines. Get an early LP or 45 RPM single and look: no copyright mark, but a patent number. The law at the time said that unless you sent your ten bucks and two copies to the Copyright office with the paperwork filled out properly that the work was Public Domain.
I have a copy of John Lee Hooker's Folk Blues from arouond 1949; no copyright mark on the record or cover. It's Public Domain. I've sampled it to CD and ripped the CDs to MP3. But it looks from TFA that these MP3s would be rejected.
Maybe I need more coffee, but I just don't get it. If anyone could enlighten me as to how this could benefit anybody I'd like to hear it.