LimeWire Likely To Shut Down Soon 264
suraj.sun quotes from a CNET story: "A federal court judge has likely dealt a death blow to LimeWire, one of the most popular and oldest file-sharing systems, according to legal experts. On Wednesday ... US District Judge Kimba Wood granted summary judgment in favor of the ... [RIAA], which filed a copyright lawsuit against LimeWire in 2006. In her decision, Wood ruled Lime Group, parent of LimeWire software maker Lime Wire, and founder Mark Gorton committed copyright infringement, induced copyright infringement, and engaged in unfair competition. 'It is obviously a fairly fatal decision for them,' said [an industry defense lawyer]. 'If they don't shut down, the other side will likely make a request for an injunction and there's nothing left but to go on to calculating damages.'" The article notes that LimeWire is used by nearly 60% of the people who download songs.
And nothing of value was lost (Score:5, Insightful)
And nothing of value was lost. Seriously, who uses an inefficient cruddy program like Limewire when you've got bit torrent?
Alternative Limewire network coming online... (Score:5, Insightful)
...in 3, 2, 1
60 percent? Really? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:And nothing of value was lost (Score:1, Insightful)
You said it, brother.
Also, RIP Ronnie James Dio, the world has lost a giant!
It's Taken The This Long? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Alternative Limewire network coming online... (Score:3, Insightful)
...in 3, 2, 1
Limewire was nothing special: just a Gnutella client with extensions. The Gnutella "network" is alive and well, has been for years, and there are many clients out there for it. Limewire just suckered a lot of people into paying for software that was readily available for free. I don't care that Limewire is getting nailed, I just don't like the media companies winning cases like this. It's bad for everybody, including them, if they just had the wit to see it.
Corporate Veil (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah but will they be able to pierce the corporate veil [wikipedia.org] and hold the CEO personally accountable? Otherwise his company becomes worthless and he keeps all the money that he's been paid in salary.
Re:And nothing of value was lost (Score:3, Insightful)
Or itunes, or Amazon's MP3 store. Oops, wait, I forgot I shouldn't admit I actually feel a moral obligation to actually pay for the music I buy on slashdot.
Re:And nothing of value was lost (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Alternative Limewire network coming online... (Score:5, Insightful)
Its like the legal profession is completely naive of how software on the Internet works.
Or they know exactly how it works and the lawyers like making gobs of cash playing whack-a-mole?
Re:And nothing of value was lost (Score:5, Insightful)
BitTorrent just seems like a waste of energy for music...but I don't really know why. I suppose it works as well for small files as large... it just feels like more work to search for something so small in the browser, open it in a new app, clutter uTorrent with a thousand tiny downloads...
BitTorrent's role in music sharing is mainly for albums and artist collections. You know, like say if you wanted the complete works of the Beatles. When your typical MP3 player has room for tens of thousands of tracks, you're a lot more likely to look for those large collections to save time, if for no other reason. Got the space, may as well fill it up.
Excellent (Score:5, Insightful)
The sooner we get these people off Limewire and onto Bittorrent, the sooner I can stop having to clean trojans off my friends PCs every few weeks.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
This. seriously.
Its true with most things: When people dodge the law, wether directly or by loopholes, there's no incensive to get the law changed, and things stay in an annoying gray area, and thats not good for anyone. Deal with the law, see how much it sucks, THEN there's a chance things will change.
Re:And nothing of value was lost (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't feel it's infringing on copyright, since I own the album. (And that is also true for out-of-print CDs and LPs as well.) I mean, I could track them down used, but that doesn't "give money to the artist".... So their argument is moot. That said, I'm not a "collector" of music in that I get discogs of every band and scour the web for bootlegs. I like the album enough to buy it, and I like the album enough to want it on my iPod... shouldn't be too difficult. (I know we're treading on "legal gray areas", but sometimes we just have to use a little common sense...Something the RIAA hasn't had, well, ever.)
Re:And nothing of value was lost (Score:1, Insightful)
Gnutella Web Cache? (Score:3, Insightful)
Its the gnutella network.
There are already a half-a-dozen alternative clients.
But do alternative clients provide their own set of Gnutella Web Cache servers [wikipedia.org]? Without one, a client doesn't know of any active nodes accepting connections into the network.
Most popular? It's just one client. (Score:3, Insightful)
What the fuck is he talking about? LimeWire is just one client... just one client... for the Gnutella network.
There are many many others! Hell, take a ready-made gnutella library and build your own one in no time!
Gnutella is not going anywhere, as it, being completely decentral, can’t be killed.
My bet is on TFA being MAFIAA FUD.
Re:UMG v. MP3.com (Score:2, Insightful)
What defines the law is what the population will put up with. If no one will put up with the lawyer's bullshit view then it's unenforceable.
"(b) it seems far less ridiculous after one studies the history of copyright law beginning in the 1500s."
It doesn't seem any less ridiculous, you can just see how something so stupid came from lots of smaller less stupid decisions. Doesn't matter how it got to where it is now, it's still fucking stupid.
Re:And nothing of value was lost (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:And nothing of value was lost (Score:3, Insightful)
I buy music on Amazon, and once iTunes offered DRM-free tracks that became an option as well (since I mostly listen on linux boxes). I don't think of this as a moral issue, it's a convenience. The bitrates are good, and less work even than torrents. For $1/song, the money really doesn't seem like a big issue. I still buy CDs that I rip myself from time to time, but more and more I'm just using the online stores.
I call it being practical.
Re:And nothing of value was lost (Score:4, Insightful)
From other clients that use the gnutella network ?
Really , limewire just uses the gnutella network . It's like banning edonkey2000 , which uses the edonkey network.
Unless they ban the entire network , but that's not likely to happen , as it's a decentralized network.
So , in other words , it sucks for limewire , but someone else will take over when they fall.
Gnutella is past, use eMule instead (Score:2, Insightful)
When I left Gnutella about 7 years ago it wasn't fully decentralized. It required Hubs (or was that Ultrapeers ?). It was also prone to spam and fake attacks because it was forwarding the query itself so that any spammer could tell you that he had the file you asked for. I eventually chose eMule because:
1) It was open source. While the eDonkey client (which eMule was initially based on) was providing better speeds and had a decentralized searchable network (Overnet) it was closed source. My decision proved wise when some years later eDonkey timebombed itself per RIAA's directive [afterdawn.com]. I had a cold dish served by those eDonkey fanboys who were claiming bollocks on the open source argument.
2) It was, and still is, under heavy development. The official client is somewhat stale but modders are working constantly to improve the client. See mods such as Neo, Xtreme, MorphXT and Shark. Mod development comes mainly from Germany, Italy and some from Israel.
3) It developed its own fully decentralized network which is now standard in any installation. In fact I'm not using servers anymore.
All that combined with an anonymous VPN gives me troublefree access to anything I want. The variety of the material is simply amazing. This is far beyond your plain old piratebay copyrighted stuff:
* Old recordings that have gone out of copyright ? Of course
* Fan made movies in their highest quality (without youtube compression) ? You bet
* Service manuals ? Anytime
* I have even found scanned medieval books there that were impossible to find anywhere else on the internet or a public library (apparently some guy has got hold of these somehow and got them public).
The speeds are not great but the overall service is practically bulletproof. It's not by chance eMule has won Sourceforge awards twice in 2006 and 2007.
But the average USA p2p user has always stuck with US-made oldies like WinMX and Gnutella. I've never figured out why.
Re:UMG v. MP3.com (Score:3, Insightful)
Two identical files with different histories are different entities.
So if I find a Beatles song somewhere in the Champernowne constant, am I free to keep it?