US court shuts down LimeWire music-sharing service

[cory777]

Source: Reuters

NEW YORK, Oct 26 (Reuters) - A U.S. federal judge on Tuesday granted the music industry's request to shut down the popular LimeWire file-sharing service, which had been found liable for copyright infringement.

The ruling by Judge Kimba Wood in Manhattan federal court halts one of the world's biggest services for letting consumers share music, movies and TV shows for free over the Internet.

Saying that LimeWire's parent Lime Wire LLC intentionally caused a "massive scale of infringement" involving thousands of works, Wood issued a permanent injunction that requires the company to disable its "searching, downloading, uploading, file trading and/or file distribution functionality."

Record companies "have suffered -- and will continue to suffer -- irreparable harm from Lime Wire's inducement of widespread infringement of their works," Wood wrote.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2616212420101026?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FprivateequityNews+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Private+Equity+News%29

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Uncensored Alternative Activist News

[meow mix]

1. dang i guess i should have used it more

some stuff isnt available for purchase and the only way to find it is in private collections

[villager]

2. They''ve shut down Napster and now Limewire...which alternative(s) will sprout up now?

n/t

[The Philosopher]

3. I use SoulSeek

which I've used for probably a decade now. And SoulSeek is add-free.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoulSeek

[girl gone mad]

4. Everyone uses torrents..

and Google indexes them.

Talk about winning the battle but losing the war!

[Heddi]

5. Frostwire...

[Renew Deal]

15. iTunes

:shrug:

[Xithras]

6. Wow. 50 million people still use Limewire?

Who knew? :shrug:

I thought Limewire died a long time ago. I gave it up six or seven years ago in favor of torrents. Last I heard, Limewire had degraded into a mess of viruses, spyware, and fake files.

It's been a while, but I seem to recall that Limewire ran over the gnutella network, and there's a bunch of gnutella clients out there. Other than forcing those 50 million users to download a different client, I wonder whether this ruling is really going to have any impact on anything.

[Blasphemer]

12. I used it occasionally and strictly for music

The viruses, spyware and fake files generally applied to video files and software. It was useless for those things but for music, it was still fine. You are correct, though, I don't see what going after just one client accomplishes.

[nyy1998]

17. Same here

[Blue_Tires]

30. i was surprised as well...

haven't used it personally in 5-6 years...It was good at first, but later I got frusterated at all the fake stuff I was d/l

[Jazzgirl]

31. I quit using them 6-7 years ago too.

Almost everybody's computer I've had to clean up of pests had that software installed. It was nothing but a bug fest.

[4lbs]

7. I'm a member of a half-dozen private torrent sites, and also utilitize several public ones.

Among them, I can get just about anything.


TV shows (entire seasons of Bones, CSI, or Smallville anyone?)

Movies (complete Friday the 13th Collection, Hellraiser or Halloween Collections, as examples)

Music (I actually buy most regular music for $7.99 or $9.99 at Best Buy, but sometimes DJ compilations and collections are $30 for a single CD. Forget that noise.)

Sporting Events (college and NFL football games)

Games (MAME and alternate platform abandonware , old IBM DOS games, etc.)

EDIT: Oh yeah, don't forget, pr0n.

I haven't used LimeWire or Napster (remember that one?) for at least 6 years.

[BolivarianHero]

10. Yep yep..

Easier to hook a controller to my PC and play Mario World and it's always fun to replay Wasteland on DOSBox once every couple of years.

[stlsaxman]

8. Thank you, Judge Kimba Wood.

[fascisthunter]

9. blah... Limewire was littered with bad files

there is a better alternative

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

11. same Kimba Wood who was a Playboy

bunny and unsuccessful AG nominee under Big Dog

[digidigido]

13. About time, theft of intellectual property is still theft

[dharmamarx]

19. The classic response to the attempt to equate "intellectual property"

with physical property is this essay by Richard Stallman:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html
The justification for so-called "intellectual property" is very different from that of physical property. Physical property cannot be easily shared, for instance; "intellectual property" can be.

[dballance]

14. While I Think the RIAA is Reprehensible In Their Prosecution of Clearly Innocent People

Sharing copyrighted material on Napster or Lime Wire or Torrents or whatever is theft. I had a great time chastising my Bible-thumping sister when I found out she was using a pirated copy of Windows a few years ago. Miss holier than thou "Al Gore is a baby-killer" found it just fine to break commandment number 8 - Thou shalt not steal. I happen to work in software development so it was particularly fun to watch her squirm with no defense for her transgressions.

But I digress. It's illegal. It's wrong. Go to iTunes and pay the damned 99 cents to get it legally. And yes, I know, not every song is available on iTunes. But just do the right thing and pay for the IP. You wouldn't walk into Starbucks and grab a bagel and run. Why do you think it's okay to steal IP?

[Pavulon]

16. I buy it if its good. I've wasted enought on shit that i pay after play.

if it sucks well they get nada.

I use amazon, no drm.

[dharmamarx]

20. No it's not "theft".

Not everything that violates the law (in this case, that violates government granted monopolies) is "theft." Nor is simply violating the law "wrong." I don't think that file-sharing will actually put the media monopoly out of business, but it would be a very good thing if it did.

[northzax]

39. sure it's theft

it is the use of someone else's product without their permission. how is that not theft? whoever bought the original IP did so under the terms and conditions that is was for their private use and not for dissemination. once they are done with the CD, or book, or DVD or whatever, they are free to pass it on to another person. they are not free to copy it for another person, without the permission of the original producer. it's not that difficult of a concept.

you wouldn't photocopy a book, right? then why copy a song or movie? when you purchase a CD (does anyone anymore?) you own that cd, not the distribution rights.

[Occulus]

27. It's a non-issue at this point.

Autodesk, Adobe, Microsoft, and vast numbers of others are in no pain at all due to software piracy (they're more concerned about open-source alternatives- Blender, GIMP, linux, etc. than piracy). The music industry fought like hell against any kind of online purchasing until Napster beat them awake with a nail-studded stick. Meanwhile, companies like Stardock- who don't put any kind of copy-protection on their games- are doing quite well, while companies that utilize schemes (I use that word intentionally) like SecuRom are feeling the pain because their copy-protection is in fact malware, and savvy users know enough to stay the hell away from it wherever possible.

And then you end up with the logical extreme: paying customers who cannot use the product they paid for because of the included method of copy protection. An excellent example of why people should pirate certain items that use certain protection schemes can be found in the original Bioshock. The protection scheme used in Bioshock only initially allowed three installs, ever. That's lifetime installs for that retail copy.

Bioshock was cracked in short order and available via torrents within a week of its arrival on the shelves (I know; I looked, and before you go all AHA!, I have a retail copy). Thus, pirates of the game could play it at will, and install it an unlimited number of times; paying customers could only ever install it three times, even on the same machine. I'm not talking about three instances, no- I'm talking about install, uninstall, install, hard drive crash, install, uninstall. POOF. You can't play Bioshock ever again, thanks for your money, and oh yeah, fuck you.

Assholes!

That was later changed to five installs and then the limitation was removed entirely, because we know that software shouldn't expire when you in fact do pay for it. However, that took time, and I'm sure there are people out there who have the game sitting on a shelf, didn't get the news, and think it won't work any more because they're over the install limit. They got ripped off, and they paid for it to happen!

The mentality has spilled over into many other areas as well. HDCP is a great example. If I don't have an HDCP-capable device chain, I get poorer quality than what I paid for, not because my hardware isn't capable of the highest quality playback the media offers (video or audio), but because, by lacking HDCP, the industry assumes I'm going to try to use the 'analog hole' to pirate the material. It's nonsense, of course, but that's what they think.

It's just silly; the only people who are ever hurt are the legitimate paying customers, and they are hurt by the efforts to stop piracy, and not the piracy itself.

I cannot think of any one single example in any industry that has disappeared, any one single company producing anything of any value at all that has gone under, shoot- I can't think of a single example of an actual industry loss, be it television, film, software, music, or any other content producer that has ever actually, irrefutably demonstrated any tangible loss as a result of piracy, and I've followed the entire issue for many, many years now. I just can't think of a single example. Technophile that I am, I should be able to come up with at least one, but I'm drawing a total blank. I honestly do not think it's nearly as serious or widespread an issue as the various industries make it out to be.

It's a red herring; fortunately, people are starting to wake up to that. We'll see what happens five to ten years from now, when massive data pipes into homes become the norm, rather than the exception. In the meantime, I'll keep buying games on Steam, because even a pirate copy of a game can die with the drive it's stored on.

[Coventina]

32. I read an article recently in Rolling Stone by U2's manager (I think)

proposing that listeners should pay for music by frequency of consumption.

IOW, the more you listen to something the more you should have to pay.

:puke:

Almost makes me hate U2, and I never thought that would happen.

[Occulus]

35. A long time ago I came up with the idea that

if the record companies could delete a song from your head every time you listened to it, and make you pay for it each "new" time you heard it, they would do exactly that.

So this doesn't really surprise me all that much.

Disgust, yes. Surprise, no. They would force royalties out of us for humming the melody if they thought they could get away with it.

[Danger Mouse]

18. Wow, Limewire was still around? I hadn't used it in a couple years...

caused issues with my old computer, didn't bother downloading it again when i got my laptop. Oh well, I'm sure something will take its place. They'll never win...

[dharmamarx]

21. The way we've come to equate the arts with property is really quite disturbing.

The smartest thing I've seen on the question of "intellectual property" is this recent quote from the great filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard: “Copyright is not a possibility, really.... An author has no right. I have no right. I only have duties. I’m against Hadopi, of course. There is no intellectual property.”
http://torrentfreak.com/film-director-helps-finance-busted-file-sharers-legal-battle-100914/

[Throd]

23. It sounds like you haven't created anything original of any value

or you would not be so cavalier about intellectual property rights.

I don't like paying for stuff if I don't have to either, but let us be honest enough in our stealing to acknowledge it for what it is. Stealing.

[NJCher]

24. I beg your pardon?

People create original work all the time, every day, day in/day out, and offer it up freely on the web. What do you think a blog is?

Music is offered free. Millions create free videos and post them on the web.

I do Flash animation and post my work around just because I get amusement out of the comments and reactions.

How much do you think the artists get from these media companies, anyway? If you'd like to know, read Gerd Leonhard. He has a bar chart in one of his books that shows the artist gets pennies.

I'm one of those people who produces original work and posts it free because I can't be bothered with a publisher. There isn't enough money in it.

And yet you sanctimoniously sit there and post about "stealing." Any informed person knows that is the media vultures who are the biggest thieves.

I'm happy to pay any artist whose work I enjoy. I don't feel obligated to pay the companies who make up the RIAA.

So yes, until they come up with an efficient delivery system, as pointed out by another poster on this thread, and a system where the artist can make money direct, I'll enjoy the free content, pay the modest prices of Netflix and others who offer content for low prices.


Cher

[Throd]

25. Good for you.

You create something. You hope others find enjoyment in it, so you give it away for free. I think that is wonderful.

I'm not talking about your product. I am talking about content that is produced for sale.

As for the music industry, I would also recommend Steve Albini's essay on how musicians get fucked by record companies.

[Occulus]

28. Could you explain something to me, then?

I was once a member of the Madison Scouts Drum and Bugle Corps, a member corps of Drum Corps International. The year I performed with them, 1994, they were one of the top six corps in the world, placing 6th at DCI finals.

None of the performers in DCI are paid. In fact, they pay corps fees for the privilege of touring for the summer. These fees can range up to several thousand dollars to perform for three months with the 'big name' corps, such as the Holy Name Cadets (previously known as the Garfield Cadets and the Cadets of Bergen County) or the Cavaliers (Rosemont, IL) or the Phantom Regiment (Rockford/Loves Park, IL).

Videos of the corps are routinely posted on YouTube immediately after DCI finals, but YouTube yanks them as fast as it can "due to a copyright claim". I've posted links to several here on DU over the past couple years, which are now sadly gone from the intertubez. Yet the performers are not paid- they pay, through the nose, and never see as much as a penny for their literal blood, sweat, and tears.

During those three months, they work harder than any performer (in any discipline) I've ever seen or heard of. I can say this with some authority because I did it, and was a musician both before and after as well; it was the hardest physical thing of any kind I've ever done. Yet their- excuse me, our- performances get scrubbed into oblivion due to a copyright claim.

My question to you is: how is that right? Is posting their performances to YouTube or another site a copyright violation?

And should it be?

To give people an idea of what I've talked about above, I give you Carolina Crown 2009: "The Grass is Always Greener". Enjoy. It might get yanked soon.

[LanternWaste]

33. I had no idea...

I had no idea any DUer was (or is) active in DCI. I think that's very, very cool. I follow DCI, and love watching. Was quite saddened when PBS stopped airing the championships a few years back-- but there's always you-tube! :)

[Occulus]

34. Why thank you. I'm not part of it anymore, but thank you.

I was only involved for that one summer. It's a really weird story, actually; I truly did not belong in that position at that level of competition.

No, really. In the most literal sense possible. I auditioned for the cymbal line. At the time, I was studying for a music education degree (I wanted to be a high school band director, nothing more), and I felt that experience in DCI would help me gain some perspective on marching band, which I could then impart to my students. It was more of an academic study for me, in that respect, than a performance challenge.

The day the final audition results were being doled out, I was offered a position in the colorguard. The reason for this was that a returning member might or might not have been coming back, and if he didn't, the spot in the cymbal line was mine. Well, he did, but they were trying something else that year, and were training people who were new to flags to the DCI style. "Oh, what the hell," I thought. It's DCI, right?

So. Here's me, a concert oboist/pianist who marches in the drumline getting handed a colorguard spot in the top six of DCI corps, having never once handled a flag, rifle, or sabre. This is the musical equivalent of a college baseball player being offered a spot in the NBA without ever having dribbled a basketball.

I couldn't resist. I just had to try it. I don't know how they figured I would make a good choice (I'm graceless as a Blue Screen of Death), and in fact I got replaced halfway through the tour and thus never got to perform at DCI Finals. I just couldn't keep up; I was competing both with and against people who had taken dance and performed in colorguard (and winterguard) for years. I simply wasn't up to the challenge, but I did get to perform in a lot of big shows and learned a fuckton in the process. I'm certain I could still write a flag book today for any high school's halftime program if I really wanted to, and after just that one summer all those years ago I'm still confident I could teach the "instrument" I "played" way back then.

It was that intense, and what I learned stayed with me for some reason.

[LanternWaste]

41. bravo to you for your season!

I was Drum Major for my HS marching band (circa 1984) when I found out about DCI. I was already bitten by the marching bug and resolved then and there that I would try out for the nearest club the June immediately after graduation. Then the most obvious thing in the world hit me-- it's ALL percussion and brass, and I, being a woodwind player, was left in the metaphorical dust.

I imagine had I tried a few more avenues (as you did), I could have snuck into the guard or the rifles, but I didn't know that at the time.

Regardless, I'm a Madison Scouts fan... and bravo to you for your season!

[LanternWaste]

40. I believe you confuse "cavalier" with "an opinion different than mine..."

I believe you confuse "cavalier" with "an opinion different than mine..." (unless of course you believe that Jean-Luc Godard, from whom the quote was taken has also never "created anything original of any value" and is therefore "cavalier" about IPR also)

[Throd]

43. If Jean-Luc Godard wants to give his work away, more power to him!

That would be his decision to make.

[DerBeppo]

22. Once legit sites match the ease, breadth, and speed of other options

then we might see a movement toward paid content. For example, a "guy I know" wanted to catch up on the Saw franchise since he hasn't seen one since the 2nd came out in theaters. His girlfriend is a big fan so he checked the legit outlets. Netflix instant didn't have the title available, Amazon and OnDemand had it for 2.99, Itunes had it for .99 or 1.99 for HD. He chose to pay the 1.99 and click to buy. His "estimated" download time? 9 hours.

9.

After waiting an hour to see if it sped up any (it didn't), he hit up his favorite torrent tracker and find all 6 in HD. Actual download time for all 6? 45 minutes.

The iTunes version was 3+ gigs, the torrent was close to 7.

I don't think he'll be using iTunes to rent anything anytime soon.

[Occulus]

29. I know, right?

The only entry that I can think of that comes close to torrents- and actually, completely trounces them in terms of speed- is Steam. I've bought an embarrassing number of games through Steam, and I'm always amazed at how fast the servers are. 1.1MB/sec, always. "The Last Remnant"- something like 7 gigabytes- took under an hour. Burnout: Paradise is something like 12GB.

It took 1.5 hours all told.

I love Steam. You'd think Apple could do better than Valve, wouldn't you? *snicker*

[DerBeppo]

37. I agree

Steam is a "just do this" model for digital distribution. I don't want to know how much I've spent there. Even games I own for other platforms I'll buy if there is a significant weekend sale.

[mvd]

26. Yeah, there will always be file sharing IMO

I'm not sure the internet can be controlled that much unless we were not a democracy, like China for example.

I pay for music because of the artists. I used to download, but stopped. I don't think it's stealing because you are not taking anything away. If anything, it's illegal distribution. I personally don't have sympathy for the greedy record companies. Popular songs are often $1.29 on iTunes, and prices just don't lower to get with the times.

[Ter]

36. Those bastards

First they got Napster. Then they came for WinMx. Now Lime Wire. The should disobey this court ruling, screw the system!

[Uncle Joe]

38. This thread has been most enlightening with many fine, informative posts.

Thanks for the thread, cory.

[John Kerry VonErich]

42. Well, there is always bittorrent

nt