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Bearshare Shut Down by RIAA 269

Pichu0102 writes "According to WebProNews, Bearshare has been shut down by the RIAA." From the article: " Online file-sharing service BearShare, along with operators Free Peers Inc., is packing it up due to a $30 million settlement with the recording industry. The conditions of the settlement were agreed to by the P2P company to avoid further copyright infringement litigation."
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Bearshare Shut Down by RIAA

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  • lol (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06, 2006 @02:56PM (#15277948)
    who actually uses bear share anyway?
  • by Anonymous Coward
    ...today a new startup called ShareBear P2P was just formed....film at 11.
  • by larry bagina ( 561269 ) on Saturday May 06, 2006 @03:02PM (#15277975) Journal
    I just heard some sad news on slashdot - P2P/Warez appBearshare was found dead in their New York colo this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss them- even if you didn't enjoy downloading britney spears songs or installing bonzai buddy, there's no denying their contributions to FREE music. Truly a DMCA icon.
  • by bogaboga ( 793279 ) on Saturday May 06, 2006 @03:02PM (#15277978)
    The Emule network is bigger. Why spare it? I have just checked it out and find that the available files now are 677.5 million with about 11 million users. Heck, this beast is huge!
    • by larry bagina ( 561269 ) on Saturday May 06, 2006 @03:07PM (#15277998) Journal
      Some of the index servers have been seized [slashdot.org] recently.
    • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06, 2006 @03:18PM (#15278040)
      If you do some lookups on the IPs and corresponding owners of some of the most popular eMule servers (Untouchable 2.0, for instance), you'll see that they're owned by anti-piracy firms. They are most likely logging and building evidence for further litigation by the RIAA.

      I imagine they see it as being more worthwhile to their cause to moniter these networks and sue users than shut them down and risk a more secure/anonymous service replacing them.

      Be very careful what servers you allow your client to connect to; always doublecheck who owns them and their corresponding nameservers.
      • Or if you want to be really paranoid and still use eMule, just do not connect to any servers. Kad searches usually get a lot more results than global server searches anyway.
    • afaik emule aren't so obviously pushing money out of the system.
      there's nothing for the riaa to get from here.

      the bear that shared the shit had a different background on this :)
    • by TubeSteak ( 669689 ) on Saturday May 06, 2006 @03:32PM (#15278105) Journal
      From TFA:
      BearShare was among several P2P service to receive cease-and-desist letters from the RIAA in September of last year. Others include Warez P2P, Limewire, eDonkey, and Soulseek, all of whom have not yet reached a settlement.


      Anyways, shutting down these businesses won't actually kill their networks. I can't think of any networks that are centralized like Napster used to be.
    • >>The Emule network is bigger.

      Err, most of those servers are fake, contain fake data, and fake db info. They're run by anti-privacy firms working for the RIAA or MPAA. I know which servers are legitimate but I doubt Joe User does.

      Best off with bittorrent really, at least the files get vetted by someone along the way. Its not perfect but so far the *AA forces haven't done too much damage to it. Aside from the "forever missing last chunk" nonsense and other tricks.
  • So ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06, 2006 @03:02PM (#15277979)
    The RIAA guys are paying the Bearshare company 30m right? As a compensation for redtape strongarm tactics?
  • WebProNews (Score:5, Funny)

    by larry bagina ( 561269 ) on Saturday May 06, 2006 @03:04PM (#15277989) Journal
    I can't be the only one to notice... WebPronEws.
  • by unity100 ( 970058 ) * on Saturday May 06, 2006 @03:07PM (#15277997) Homepage Journal
    But different from the times of Teddy Roosevelt, this time they are hiding behind outdated intellectual property laws from the last century - the times when something was reproducable and distributable at great cost. The cost of reproduction and distribution of intellectual property items (mainly songs, text, publications etc) have taken a deep dive, but prices have not. They want to preserve this profit margin, and they are maintaining a rightful face because of the a century old laws.

    But in fact, what they are doing is a new style of Robber Baron practice.

    We need a new Teddy Roosevelt.
    • Just because the cost per unit is zero, doesn't mean that the creators forfeit all rights to a ROI. It still cost money to make the damn thing, cover the losses from all the shit music people don't buy. I propose a scale of decreasing cost over time, with the work becoming public domain after a certain amount of revenue.
    • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06, 2006 @03:30PM (#15278093)
      The loss of Eldred_v._Ashcroft [wikipedia.org] was bad enough. Essentially Congress now has unlimited power.

      Having Supreme Court Justicies like Ruth Bader Ginsburg [wikipedia.org] doesn't help. She and her mother are outspoken attorneys in favor of unlimited IP rights and unlimited congressional powers. Remember kids, if you extend a law for 50 years every 10 years, ad infinitum, that's not "unlimited"!

      Now we're seeing things like the JRMI Model Train SDK [sourceforge.net] project getting sued [lwn.net] (1/2 pg. down) for $300,000.00 for infringing patents. The impact of this kind of suit on small software developers, whether free or closed, will be devastating.

      And the DMCA [lwn.net] getting new provisions that treat IP violations like drug crimes...forfiture of property! That's right, if little Bobby downloads a song from the internet, the RIAA can seize your house, car, property, etc.

      Yay America! The land of freedom and liberty!
      • Now we're seeing things like the JRMI Model Train SDK project getting sued (1/2 pg. down) for $300,000.00 for infringing patents. The impact of this kind of suit on small software developers, whether free or closed, will be devastating.

        What's even worse is that JMRI was first distributed 6 months before the application for the "infringed patent" was filed. Do note that the patent holder is Japanese, but he does have an American legal form doing the dirty work.

    • by the eric conspiracy ( 20178 ) on Saturday May 06, 2006 @03:39PM (#15278141)
      Sorry - but your premise seems rather faulty to me. The fall in cost of reproduction and distribution seems to me to make copyright laws more relevant than less so. When it was expensive to reproduce original works, the incentive to do so is minimal and copyright laws didn't matter very much unless you happened to have the rather large capital investment sitting there in the form of a Linotype machine and a web-fed printing press. With modern technologies reducing such costs, the incentive to copy becomes much greater.

      No, what we have now is a classic black market situation. With the price of the goods controlled at artificially high levels through taxation or regulation there will always be an underground trade in the goods in question, whether it be in alcohol, drugs or music. There is really no way to prevent it unless you find a strong technological countermeasure.

      • by twitter ( 104583 ) on Saturday May 06, 2006 @05:23PM (#15278470) Homepage Journal
        The fall in cost of reproduction and distribution seems to me to make copyright laws more relevant than less so. When it was expensive to reproduce original works, the incentive to do so is minimal and copyright laws didn't matter very much...With modern technologies reducing such costs, the incentive to copy becomes much greater.

        You have completely missunderstood the purpose of copyright and give undue importance to all the wrong things. If the goal of copyright is to make money for publishers, your reasoning is correct. If the goal of copyright is to "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries" [archives.gov], you are wrong. The original term of US copyrights was 14 years, despite the tremendous cost of publishing at the time. The goal is to spread information and culture, not to make sure a bunch of greedheads have money. As the cost of that spread declines, the time required to recoup costs diminishes and vanishes. The spirit of America is that you are free to do what you want but no one owes you a living. Exclusive franchises were hated then and should be today.

        The RIAA are demanding government protection from legitimate competitors and a defacto control of culture. If you don't understand this, you don't understand how the music industry works. It's not so much your ability to get music that matters to them, it's their inability to control what you are exposed to that scares them to death. They seek to perpetuate an empire of control based on the technical limitations of 20th century broadcast and recording technology and a great deal of racketeering. Without RIAA only stores, selling junk sampled on the nations three radio networks, the world's big three music publishers start to look as good or worse than any other music publisher. Musicians and artists would then be able to market themselves freely and keep more of their earnings and the industry would collapse. Make no mistake at the level of control they seek with DRM and broadcast flags. They want the ability to limit what you are exposed to and are willing to pay for and then to squeeze you for every play while paying the artist next to nothing. The riches they earn are based on exclusion and extortion, not on the promotion of excellence and that directly contradicts the purpose of copyright.

        In a world of cheap publishing there should be as many publishers as there are artists. Why not? Anyone can set up a web page. There's no longer a technical reason to reject any manuscript and not offer it to the public. The previous legitimate purpose of publishers, to chose and promote excellence, has been also co-opted by web. Copyright laws, based on paper and mechanical copy are insanely restrictive and obsolete.

        • by Haeleth ( 414428 ) on Saturday May 06, 2006 @05:47PM (#15278538) Journal
          The original term of US copyrights was 14 years, despite the tremendous cost of publishing at the time. The goal is to spread information and culture, not to make sure a bunch of greedheads have money. As the cost of that spread declines, the time required to recoup costs diminishes and vanishes.

          Diminishes, perhaps. But it will never vanish, because you have to take into account the cost of production as well as the cost of distribution. Music and movies and books do not spring into existence fully formed: somebody needs to sit down and expend a considerable amount of time and effort -- and hence money -- creating them.

          Limited copyright is essential as a means of enabling them to recoup that. The GP's point is that as the cost of copying diminishes, it becomes easier and easier for society to say "I like that song, but I can copy it for free, so I don't have to pay you for it." And at that point, the incentive to write another great song is gone... and society is the poorer.

          Therefore, as the cost of copying diminishes, it becomes necessary either to enforce copyright law more strictly, or to find another means of compensating artists for their work. Right now, however, copyright is the best means we've found to compensate artists. It's not perfect, any more than capitalism and democracy are perfect; it's just that all the other systems anyone's ever proposed are even worse. If you have a better idea, of course, do pray share it with us.

          The spirit of America is that you are free to do what you want but no one owes you a living.

          Nobody owes you one, sure. But if society doesn't allow you to make a living doing something, you aren't going to do it. So you could say that society owes it to itself to provide artists with a living...
          • by twitter ( 104583 ) on Saturday May 06, 2006 @06:33PM (#15278700) Homepage Journal
            ... copyright is the best means we've found to compensate artists. If you have a better idea, of course, do pray share it with us.

            No it's not and it's only part of the problem. The current system does not pay artists [jdray.com]. Exclusive franchises never pay anyone but themselves and they are entirely clueless [salon.com]. People have been making, sharing and profiting from music long before mass production and insane copyright laws. They will continue to do so. These guys [wikipedia.org] figured out how to make plenty of money and let people share their music a long time ago. You make money doing things for people. The music industry does very little of that but keeps the rewards for itself. Copyright is only one of their tools. Creative Commons [creativecommons.org] is trying to pull something useful from copyright laws. You can be sure they are on the RIAA hit list.

          • Is the cost of production and distribution (note we have very high tech computerized studios now and the web to distribute) THAT high to justify reaping $100 m in profits from a copyrighted title and squandering money on extravagant parties, houses, overpriced designer items, and such ? By copying a 4 mb data file ?

            Or is it a new kind of aristocracy with a similar understanding of nobility with their historic counterparts ?
            • A lot depends on the production costs and risks involved. Making a large scale feature movie is very costly and quite risky. LOTR costs $300 million, and nobody had a clue as to whether it was going to work financially or not. Without copyrights it would not have happened.

        • As the cost of that spread declines, the time required to recoup costs diminishes and vanishes.

          That is only true if the cost was primarily distribution, which has never been the case. The paper and ink to make a book costs very little compared to the time and effort which went into writing it. Not to mention all the costs in making a professional music CD or feature film, which are huge compared to the cost of the physical CD/DVD. How many manhours go into creating high-quality applications that still fit o
        • The goal is to spread information and culture, not to make sure a bunch of greedheads have money.

          The goal is to promote the progress in the useful arts. You do that by encouraging the creation of said progress via novel works. If a bunch of greedheads think they are going to make an obscene profit on it they underwrite the creation of the progress and novel works. The Constitution doesn't say "To Promote the Disemination and Spread of Science and Useful Arts", that is something rather different.

          The RIAA are
      • by Jah-Wren Ryel ( 80510 ) on Saturday May 06, 2006 @05:23PM (#15278472)
        When it was expensive to reproduce original works, the incentive to do so is minimal and copyright laws didn't matter very much unless you happened to have the rather large capital investment sitting there in the form of a Linotype machine and a web-fed printing press.

        You hit the nail on the head - back when the social compact of copyright was created - we, the people, did not give up much on our end of the bargain. Since, as you said, it wasn't easy to make copies back then, so giving up the inherent natural right to make copies was no big deal.

        Now that copying is easy for anyone and everyone, that bargain is no longer so favorable to us, the people and we want to renegotiate.

        The problem is, the entrenched copyright cartel thinks they don't have to renegotiate, that they can just dictate terms. That is a severe denial of reality on their part.
      • by Beryllium Sphere(tm) ( 193358 ) on Saturday May 06, 2006 @06:22PM (#15278666) Journal
        >The fall in cost of reproduction and distribution seems to me to make copyright laws more relevant than less so.

        Putting more precision on it, the effect is to make copyright less enforceable and proportionally more expensive to society at large.

        An unenforceable law is a plague and a cancer. It spreads fear and encourages contempt for the law. Attempts to enforce an unenforceable law lead to the DMCA, the War on Drugs Used By Nonwhite People, and the like.

        The burden of copyright didn't show up when you needed a press more expensive than a house to publish a book. Suppose it's 1940 and suppose I don't know the real numbers so I gasify that a book costs $2 to print and $.05 in royalties. The royalties don't stop publication. Fast forward to now. What does it cost to move an ebook from New York to Los Angeles? Unmeasurable. What happens when someone demands a fifty-cent royalty? That poor ebook probably doesn't get out on the Internet.
      • You are missing one point here :

        The high prices that the products were sold by then were justified - it was an ethical profit on top of the cost. However it is not now. The prices are the same, but the cost is too little.

        Its no logic to propose 'it is free market, if you choose so you buy it if not you do not, and invisible hand adjusts the prices' - no !

        Its free market when the market is free. And with the publishers, RIAA, their money greedy extravagantly living 'artists', and their purchased sen
    • by nurb432 ( 527695 )
      Dont hold your breath for one. No one has the balls for it. ( and i dont blame them, with the way things work now )
    • RIAA = New entourage of robber barons

      The RIAA (unlike, say, Standard Oil back in the day, etc) is just a trade association, acting on behalf of its member companies, who in turn act on behalf of the people who hired them to handle a portion of their business affairs: the artists who want to publish their music and get paid for it. Your "robber barons" are Bono, KT Tunstall, Celine Dion, Slipknot, 50 Cent, and every other artist that uses an RIAA-member company to deal with the money side of their publish
      • by Jah-Wren Ryel ( 80510 ) on Saturday May 06, 2006 @05:38PM (#15278510)
        Are you really comparing a relative monopoly on, say, energy distribution, mining, or rail transport with a trade association made up of hundreds of publishing companies representing thousands of artists?

        Yes.

        Because that trade association is comprised of approximately 5 large companies that together account for over 90% of the market for all media in the western, and most of the eastern, world.

        That makes them an oligopoly, who is just as cut-throat and abusive as his neighbor, monopoly.

        It's up to the musician to decide if they agree with you, and want to give their work away, or sell it through a different pricing model?

        That's tantamount to asking if it is up to Boeing and Airbus to decide if they agree with gravity and want to make planes that work with gravity or if they should purchase a law that makes gravity illegal instead.

        It is human nature to make copies of stuff we like. People have been making mix-tapes since they first invented reel-to-reel recorders and people have been making copies of books since pen and ink were first invented.

        Now that the tools to make millions of digital copies for effectively no cost at all are in the hands of hundreds of millions of people, trying to outlaw human nature's desire to copy is like outlawing gravity.

        These artists need to realize that the market has changed if they don't figure out how to change with it, the new gravity is going to crush them. Just like any other business that has had to deal with revolutionary changes in technology. Keep making buggy-whips and try to outlaw cars, or start building engines instead - their choice.
      • Your "robber barons" are Bono, KT Tunstall, Celine Dion, Slipknot, 50 Cent, and every other artist that uses an RIAA-member company to deal with the money side of their publishing.......Are you really comparing a relative monopoly on, say, energy distribution, mining, or rail transport with a trade association made up of hundreds of publishing companies representing thousands of artists?

        Indeed !

        The difference in formation/nature of an organisation from another is not much important, if the two entit
  • by Zaphod2016 ( 971897 ) on Saturday May 06, 2006 @03:08PM (#15278000) Homepage

    I first learned about BearShare and LimeWire aroud the same time. Mid-2000 if memory serves. Napster had recently "gone down" and I was still in the middle of my "wow- I missed 100's of years worth of awesome music" phase.

    Ok, so here come the "RIAA is evil" rants. I can accept that (after all, this is /.). However, please consider:

    • One of the major anti-RIAA arguments around these parts is that they don't actually do anything to benefit anyone. I agree 100%. But that said, how can we cry over a company which made ad revenues based on pirated content? Scum versus scam: who cares who wins? We are the losers.

    • In six years, I could have downloaded more music than I will ever have the time to listen to. Long before BearShare went down, tons of new p2p services appeared. The RIAA can keep playing "whack-a-mole" for the next 100 years (and I'm sure they intend to) but "Joe User" will *still* be "illegally" downloading and sharing the "Black album" no matter how many times the drummer of Metallica cries about it.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I am not afraid of any **AA, because I don't infringe on copyright. If they came after me by mistake, I would've taken them to court, just like I take anyone to court, who comes after me by mistake, and they would ended up paying me money.
      • by a_nonamiss ( 743253 ) on Saturday May 06, 2006 @04:50PM (#15278375)
        Sorry, man. I love your attitude, and I think you are 100% correct idealogically, but that's not really how it would work. Unless you have a fair amount of money to start off with, (in the tens of thousands or more) you'll have a tough time finding a lawyer that will take this without being paid up front. It's not like you spilled hot coffee on your vagina and are suing McDonald's for $30 million. Many decent lawyers would jump at a case like that, because there is a reasonable chance that they could make bank on it. 25% of $30 million is a nice paycheck. No, in your case, the lawyer knows that the **AA will fight the case tooth and nail, regardless of whether or not they have a case. Chances are, their lawyers, which are not working on contengiency, are very, very good. They can drag it out to take up thousands of hours of your lawyers' time over a couple years. What's more, even if you do win a countersuit, a jury isn't going to award you $30 million out of sympathy. You didn't really lose anything except your time. No deaths or mutilated body parts that will make the jury feel sorry for you. No, at best, you can hope to have your legal fees reimbursed, which isn't going to be even close to 25% of $30 million. Maybe a couple hundred thousand, which your lawyer will gladly take. And there's not even a good chance of that happening.

        No, my friend, you would have to pay a large retainer up front. Very large. And chances are, you would not see anything from any of that. Technically, you could win your case, but you will ultimately lose money. Yes, the system is screwed up and unfair, and the **AA knows that. Unfortunately, they are smart, and that's why they use these tactics.
    • The reason that the RIAA and the MPAA are so dangerous is not because of a bunch of lawsuits or their gangsterism (although those are bad enough) it's because of the truly bad law for which they've been largely responsible. I couldn't care less if they want to keep distribution rights to crummy modern music ... I do however care when they create laws (and the DMCA didn't just happen because Congress thought it was a good idea, the media companies basically paid for it) that negatively impact everyone, in vi
      • The reason that the RIAA and the MPAA are so dangerous is...because of the truly bad law for which they've been largely responsible.

        I agree 100%. Let me rephrase "point 2":

        The USA (a 90% wonderful place) has quite a few "dumb laws" on the books- most put there by crooked goons with corrupt motives. However, we the people have *always* responded to these laws with passive resistance: we ignore them. See also:

        • Casual marijuana smokers.
        • Shakira fans downloading her latest single.
        • Speeding past that "de
    • The good news is that Gnutella continues to run strong. I actively share a few Gigabytes of free content including operating systems, free music, public domain image archives and so on via gtk-gnutella [wikipedia.org] which you can acquire from the sourceforge project pages for the gtk-gnutella project [sourceforge.net]. Open up both TCP and UDP ports inbound for whatever port you choose to operate it on, and it performs at least as well as bittorrent, but with amazingly useful searching and filtering options.

      The gtk-gnutella folks (who do
    • But that said, how can we cry over a company which made ad revenues based on pirated content? Scum versus scam: who cares who wins? We are the losers.

      Just like Queen Elizabeth have cared about pirated content by Drake and Hawkins an d the like - They were pirates, but they were pirates on HER side.
  • by IAmAI ( 961807 ) on Saturday May 06, 2006 @03:09PM (#15278006)
    Nothing against file sharing, but good ridance to that malware infested excuse for a file sharing app.
    • by Motherfucking Shit ( 636021 ) on Saturday May 06, 2006 @06:01PM (#15278577) Journal
      BearShare comes with a bundled copy of SaveNow. The installer explicitly mentions this. Removing it is as simple as killing the process and running the SaveNow uninstaller from Add/Remove Programs, and doing so has no impact on BearShare's usability. I'm no fan of these bundled apps, but this is far from spyware and even malware is a stretch. BearShare is extremely up-front about exactly what is going to be installed, that's a lot more than you can say for many of these apps.

      BTW, I haven't RTFA but BearShare is still alive and kicking [bearshare.com] and you can even still download the installer [bearshare.com]. As long as people still have the client, the RIAA hasn't "shut down" anything.
  • by leoaugust ( 665240 ) <leoaugust@ g m a i l . com> on Saturday May 06, 2006 @03:14PM (#15278026) Journal
    Warez still lives, as it did many years ago .... Drugs still survive despite some high profile victories by the DEA.



    It is the same with the RIAA. These and DEA "folks" will keep on busting some high profile targets, but the iceberg like underground trading will forever go on ...



    It has always been like this, and will be, even if the "boston strangler" steps in ...

  • A valuable lesson (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Umbral Blot ( 737704 ) on Saturday May 06, 2006 @03:25PM (#15278074) Homepage
    Lesson 1: Don't be centralized.
  • No big deal at all. Bearshare is but a tiny fish in a HUGE ocean.
    • It was closer to flesh-eating bacteria. Piracy, like the poor, will always exist. There are ways to limit the scope, though. In the case of the RIAA, hiring fewer prostitutes and spending less on cocaine would probably be an excellent start. The savings should be enough to maintain the profit margins even after slashing CD prices in half.
  • Nice work... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Saturday May 06, 2006 @03:27PM (#15278083) Journal
    Another company gone thanks to an out-of-court settlement due to RIAA's lawyer army and economical advantage. They've really found out a working model for being right regardless what a boring test in court would say. Your tool can be used to infringe on copyright, therefore it should not exist, and no one has anything to say about the lack of logic in that argument. *AA and all those companies that live on registering, then suing for patent infrigements should merge to form a Coalition of Law Abusing Powers. Now that would be really scary... :-P Corporations that harvest the economy crops on destroying things rather than constructing. Unfortunately for the media business, they need the latter today, not the former, assuming they wish to keep their customers that is. It's a funny world when you're better supported by pirates than iTunes if you wish to use your music.
    • So, in other words, if you get hit by those people you could legitimately say you got a dose of the C.L.A.P. The comparison with a disease is particularly appropriate, I think.


    • I'm just as an illegal listener as the next guy, but let's be fair: there _is_ a difference between "your tool can be use to pirate music" and "you make most of your income because people use your tool to pirate music". I'm also pretty sure in the latter case you're inclined to make your tool better at pirating then everything else - thus actively helping the "pirates".

      The "badest" guy is no doubt still RIAA, for many things >10000$ settlements being amongst th
    • It about time someone demostrates that music does indeed damage sanity, sexuality and hearing, then we form a class action suit for anyone whoes listen to such and band, and sue to RIAA for profitting from good
      that damage listeners.
  • by Chaffar ( 670874 ) on Saturday May 06, 2006 @03:28PM (#15278085)
    1. Create shady online file-sharing service.
    2. Attract attention to yourself by any means possible EXCEPT by becoming popular amongst users.
    3. Get paid 30M $ to stop your illegal activities.
    4. Profit.

    Keep this one in mind kids, it's not everyday you get a 4-step solution to easy money with all 4 steps included :)

    • by Zocalo ( 252965 )
      Actually, there are a couple of not insignificant flaws with your steps numbered #3 and #4:

      3. Pay $30M to prevent further copyright infringement lawsuits.
      4. Loss.

      Although step 4 could be profit if can you manage to clear more than your settlement in subscription fees, ad revenue and then selling on the personal details of your subscribers once all other operating expenses are taken into account. That probably didn't happen here though, and is unlikely to happen to the next "business" to try using this

    • I think the above reply'er miss your point.

      Your plan does/could work. The loser is the VCs and subscribers that feed money into the 'service' that is 'stealing' your products. Which in this scenario don't even need to be provided, as the users will do that for you. Bonus checks all around! And be sure to only kill it off once enough cash is accumulated and you've the milked the correct amount of fees for the lawyers.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    http://slyck.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=22181 [slyck.com]
    I have not used Bearshare for years.
    it's just another gnutella clients.
    Only with spyware the edonkey/emule network is better anyway and its open source.
  • http://www.bearshare.com/ [bearshare.com]

    d/l of bs clinet still active too.. as of 12:37PM PST
  • Not in fact true (Score:3, Interesting)

    by GillesL ( 896791 ) on Saturday May 06, 2006 @03:53PM (#15278197)
    Considering that I went to Bearshare website... got the software and got a song "Let it be" by the Beatles... about 1 minute ago, I would say that the story is not exactly true.
    • I hope you gave your PC a booster shot then cleaned it with bleach afterwards

      ain't Bearshare the same as Kazaa and LimeWire in that it rots your computer from the inside to generate revenue?
  • Oblig Puns (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I guess they couldn't "bear" the legal fees for the case.

    It was a "grizzly" trial.

    The RIAA really got their fur ruffed by BearShare's actions.

    Lets all give "paws" and contemplate this change in the P2P landscape.

    This is the end of BearShare's "tail".

    The 800lb Gorilla beat the Bear!
  • This is it. No more, no less.

    It is not much different from the period that the nobility in 18th century france tried to hold on to their ancient 'rights' to exploit, dictate, and get their way, against the will and in expense of the people - the commons, the low, the 'subjects'.

    Sure, things seem very different now, and in many respects they are - there are no more hereditary nobility that hold judiciary power on us, there is no 'unelected' persona that can pass laws that might dictate whether we shoul
  • Bonzi Buddy "Hey Yogi, are you still hosting servers for that P2P filesharing network?"

    Yogi Bearshare "Of course, Bonzi Buddy, how else can I afford to keep buying Picnic Baskets full of food? All I have to do is help people pirate music files and show advertising in their faces as they use my malware designed application."

    Bonzi Buddy "But Yogi, Ranger RIAA won't like it."

    Yogi Bearshare "Forget the Ranger, Bonzi Buddy, we are going to make a fortune."

    Spiney Shyster "Excuse me, are you Yogi Bearshare?"

    Yogi Bearshare "Of course, are you an advertiser who wants to advertise on my P2P file sharing network?"

    Bonzi Buddy "Uh oh, I don't like the sound of this Yogi."

    Yogi Bearshare "Nonsense, Bonzi Buddy, so whadda ya want Mack?"

    Spiney Shyster "Here is a subpeona to appear in court, Ranger RIAA is suing you for $30 Million."

"I am, therefore I am." -- Akira

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