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LimeWire to Block Copyrighted Work
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."
...Limewire use will plummet.
Circumcision is child abuse.
is there anything that prevents you as sharing "HALF LIFE 2 REALLY WORKS PLAYS ONLINE.EXE" as your own work though?
Limewire will be buried beside its older sibling Napster.
Trolling is a art,
Looking at the idea from purely development standpoint, it seems that it fails to address:
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?
I assume that anybody can declare a file shareable. But the *user* is the one who has to make this declaration.
This means LimeWire is not encouraging nor participating in violation of copyright.
Thus Limewire hopes to survive the lawsuits to come.
what does this really mean? Limewire is just a gnutella client. If it suddenly refuses to work, users will just grab another client and use that instead. "apt-get install gtk-gnutella" Wow, that was really hard.
Sorry, but as soon as this goes out, faster than you can say "Arrrrrr, Matey", someone is going to publish a patched version that removes this. Welcome to the world of OSS: If you don't like it, compile it yourself.
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
This seems like an effort in futility. With all the networks out there and only Limewire doing this people will just switch products. And if all the commerical networks start doing this then an OSS alternative will just take it's place. Check out http://gift.sourceforge.net/
Start.....Settings......Add/Remove Programs.....
Limewire pro already pops up a message saying it can't determine if a file is licensed or not and if you still want to download. Click yes and the checkbox that says "always use this answer" and you'll never see it again.
Also here's the source. Go build your own without this 'feature'.
$_='while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;$c=142;
Perhaps in the short term. But perhaps in the future it will enable more companies and open source groups to use it as a primary distribution method. It is hard to be taken seriously when you say the only way to get your product is threw the Pirated Software channels.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The legal repercussions of Limewire giving up the fight for open p2p and enforcing explicit licence checks on files are what's most important here, the fact that the supreme court have muddied the waters enough to start working against p2p developers again. The fact that Limewire itself has these blocks in place is more of a liability reduction move than anything else, as due to Limewire's open source nature an anonymous coder or two can go through and make non-official versions of the program that do not honor these checks. Obviously Limewire themselves cannot be held accountable for versions of the code produced by unrelated users, and the arms race begins for them to track the creators of modified versions.
Business Voyeur
The RIAA has been sueing companies that SELL p2p apps.
What about projects like shareaza?
are hundreds of OS contributers going to get a suppoena too?
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
LimeWire Usage Drops Precipitously
* "Future" = two weeks after this is implemented
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
I help a friend of mine with his band’s music. So far I’ve run into DVDs of their performance that neither of us could rip the MPEG from, and now it looks like it may be tough to share his music on LimeWire, even though he likes the idea (as a LimeWire user himself) and I have explicit permission, he’s not gonna wanna release his entire album under a CC license (although he is considering it for a few tracks with the hope of getting them used in independent films).
I guess LimeWire feels they have no choice due to the legal climate these days, but they must know it can only end badly. Oh well.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
...they are protecting themselves. Fair enough. What remains to be seen is if LimeWire will provide the RIAA (or other thugs) with personal information of the people sharing files (if they even have that, I'm not familiar with their architecture).
"Collective commons?"
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.)
Its already slow enough as it is, what happens when the users all decide they dont want some random crap with a free license. There are going to be no peers out there to actually make the network run.
LimeWire is open source, it'll fork...
Every time they release a new version of LimeWire there is a "cracked" pro version within days. Why? Because you don't even need to "crack" it, it's open source, you can just d/l the source and remove the "features" you don't want.
That is to say that licenses are tied to individuals, rather than works. I may have a license for a tune where my neighbor may not.
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.
Is thousands of files with fake Creative Commons licence-tags floating the internet.
Shouldn't the title be "LimeWire may Block Copyrighted Work"? These branches haven't been committed to the main trunk, after all.
I guess it is a slow news day....
smd4985
This prevents *sharing* copyrighted works, not downloading them. If anything, it protects the average user from becoming the target of lawsuits.
It doesn't change what's available on the network. If download times go up because fewer newbies commit accidental copyright violation, so be it. Anyone who thinks that's a bad thing is no better than a malware author exploiting the average clueless user.
FBI: Do you have permission from the National Football League and the American Broadcasting Company to record this viewing of Monday Night Football? Peter: Ummm. I only have permission from ABC.
In the long run no P2P application companies will the able to survive the RIAA/MPAA pressure, LimeWire, eDonkey and the others "commercial" P2P will have to go. But that is by no mean the end of P2P, Open Source client like eMule and for sure Open-from-the-start protocols like Bittorent are going to be the long run winner of the "underground" P2P community.
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...
And if all the [commercial] networks start doing this then an OSS alternative will just take it's place. Check out http://gift.sourceforge.net/
And if you're stuck with Windows because you're stuck with applications or devices that aren't ported to Linux or BSD for x86, you can use giFT through KCeasy.
What is this "Collective Commons"?
If aspiration is a virtue, achievement cannot be a vice.
the Courage - Sincere Mistake
... and so on...
BetaVille - Giant in Tokyo
Deleture - Like to dislike you
False Medicine - Special J
The Cops - Every inhale you take
Filenames may vary.
Is it just me, or have the slashdot articles been VERY frightening/depressing of late?
...while at the same time our few remaining bastions of freedom are popping out of existence or compromising to the point of uselessness, all the while being cheered on by visionless people who honestly believe that this is a good thing...
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.
In case people don't know, LimeWire is open source... http://sourceforge.net/projects/openwire
Perhaps the creators of Limewire should focus more on preventing the sharing of photographs and videos that exploit small children instead of going Lordy Lordy over copyrighted music.
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.
$fortune
Tomorrow has been canceled due to lack of interest.
I don't know how they plan on doing this...considering Limewire is released under the GPL.
/usr/lib/LimeWire/SOURCE on my Linux machine:
e +2.4.0+out+now! so it can always happen again.
From
-------------
The LimeWire source code can be obtained from the LimeWire open source
development site at www.limewire.org. The source code can be easily
accessed at: http://gui.limewire.org/servlets/ProjectSource.
Thank you for your interest in LimeWire!
-LimeWire Team
-----------
The COPYING file in the same directory contains a copy of the GNU GPL v 2.
So, considering Limewire LLC doesn't own the copyrights to all of the work in the program, they cannot change the license terms on the other code. What is preventing a fork that still allows copyrighted material to be downloaded???
Limewire was forked once before http://www.zeropaid.com/news/923/Release:+FreeWir
I think this is Limewire LLC's way of removing their own liability, even though they know Limewire will now get forked. I don't really blame them either.
I wonder what's causing them to do this. Something tells me that they didn't do this based on feedback saying "Please stop us from sharing copyrighted work!"
Where to folks?
I download most of my stuff using bitorrent these days and haven't touched Gnutella in a long time, although Limewire was my favorite client for Linux. A few months back I would use it from time to time to grab a song I heard on the radio. I just remember it being filled with lots of endless loops, blank files and songs with random glitches placed it and distributed by publisher groups.
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...
Hint: not everything needs a license.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
[No text.]
Even though Batman Begins (the movie) maybe copyrighted, Thank God Batman.Begins.DVDRip.XviD-DoNE is not.
Seems like LimeWire is trying hard to loose even more users. Not that I know anyone who is still using it.
Thats hilarious, limewire is going to die sooo quick.
If anything they're presenting the RIAA with a means of first suing everybody on the network and then suing the sh*t out of LimeWire for allowing their "secure" system to easily be compromised. It's an admission of guilt that they need the "safeguard" in the first place. The only other scenario is that they have or will have a deal with the RIAA to be the authorized "legal" P2P client, but this seems far fetched at present.
Is the last gasp of the Enlightenment. Will the last person please knock the rust off the switch and turn out the lights.
i thought the whole point of p2p was to shrare copyrighted mp3s? am i missing something?
Limewire doesn't have to do this to avoid trouble under the recent Supreme Court ruling. SCOTUS found that the two companies could still be held accountable for some of the infringement because they encouraged it in their marketing. If Limewire's not been encouraging downloads of illegal songs with their client they should be fine. If they have they're already screwed and this is unlikely to help much.
Why not just attach a license file that limewire is looking for? You can still share the files.
It sounds like this change is to blow some smoke up to RIAA's butt and make them happy.
Assuming this does what it advertises, I don't see how this poses a problem. Everyone knows that P2P is mostly used for swapping music by independent artists, as well as large, legal files such as Linux distributions. It isn't a problem to tag these files appropriately.
What is so difficult to understand about: "The Genie is out of the bottle." ?!
These companies/products can try and try to force DRM onto people, but unless people elect to use it, they will fail.
I buy music on iTunes because it's legal/guilt-free, and affordable (and because I can afford to buy music these days).
The only people that pirate music are high-school kids that can't afford to buy music. The record labels are crying because they can no longer take advantage of these kids. Adults still purchase music, just as they did before, and there have been numerous studies to suggest this.
Record companies can rot in hell. I was once a poor high school kid that could only buy one CD a week. Now I'm a well to do Adult and I can buy a complete CD on iTunes without even thinking twice about the purchase.
I feel even more comfortable knowing that the Artist is getting more of the revenue as well.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
It will become about as useless as Anonymizer.
You know according the judges ruling the other high inducement to piracy device is in fact he music CD itself since it shighly copyable.. Does thi smean that RIAA members are required to issue only DRM protected musci CDs to comply with the judge's ruling/order? And if so than does that RIAA members can sued for non-compliance? What is good for the goose had better be good for the gander.. Is it not about time that the RIAa get sued with their own legal theories?
Fred Grott(aka shareme) http://mobilebytes.wordpress.com
...they get scared and do what you want them to do. The copyfight will not be won if nobody stands up to the *AA. Getting sued is not that bad, at least you can make a valid point in court instead of simply running like cowards and you get the press for it too.
Freedom is strength, Ignorance is peace, War is slavery.
In Soviet Russia:
3. Profit!
2. ???
1. Imagine a Beowulf cluster of sigs, you insensitive clod!
What, there weren't any new overlords you could welcome?
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
Ok, what if everyone included a GPL License with their shared porn vids? Will limewire consider it licensed porn? I am surprised that all this is going on in USA, the self proclaimed harbinger of freedom.
RIAA: But look, we found these modified versions that bypass it!
LimeWire: Sorry, man, that's not our code. Go yell at them, not us.
Or if you prefer a more geekoid version:
LimeWire (waves hand): This is not the code you are looking for.
RIAA: This is not the code we are looking for.
LimeWire: Our code is clean
RIAA: Their code is clean.
LimeWire: Move along
RIAA: Move along
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
What doofus wrote that headline? I seriously doubt that LimeWire intends to block all works on which the copyright has expired. Hint: copyright is automatic and compulsory.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
...everybody just attach a Collective Commons license to what ever they share and Limewire are off the hook when its actually the latest Harry Potter film?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
It's about time that programs like this, which are used mainly for distributing copyrighted material illegally, started trying to clean up their act. I know there are legal uses, but in practice these are far and few.
So LimeWire is doing what essentially amounts to an embrace of DRM by default, as in if they can't prove it legal it doesn't transfer it.
So what? Do we HAVE to use it? I'd be more afraid if every ISP began using transparent proxies that stopped all unapproved traffic.
Predictably, a few will go, "what? I thought they already did." Might want to up those meds.
The rest can... rest. Not a big deal here. It's the choice of the rightful owners of a privately made application and not one that has a lot of usage to begin with.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
This won't work, and will be easily avoidable. But I like that they are putting in the effort. I say this as an artist who has something for sale commercially and who has released some things under GPL. I want it to be my choice.
I also seek out music which is under liscences like GPL and Creative Commons, but don't share behind the backs of artists who don't choose to.
As to the parent, you've got to decide if you want to be under a CC licsence or not. It's lame to put your stuff out on the P2P nets without it, or being in the public domain. If you want people to trade it, bit the bullet. If you don't, then don't put it on the P2P nets.
www.allofmp3.com
10-30 cents USD per song
You choose the format and bit rate.
Totally legal in Russia.
Dave Barnes 9 breweries within walking distance of my house
Peer Impact is a walled garden p2p network that only distributes authorised content across its network it is taking the opisite route to Limewire and has aquired licences from the record labels that allow its users to re-disribute content they purchase through the network and user recive a system credit for thier upload bandwith .
Most comercial p2p companies and thier investors are looking to monetise thier product without lawsuits or revenue from adware and spyware It looks like Peer impact has beat them to the punch and has a compelling bussiness model based on superdistribution .
http://www.peerimpact.com/
Gee, if they don't want people to use Limewire why don't they just stop making it?
It's nice to see companies committing suicide over scare tactics by the RIAA/MPAA. Oh wait, no, I lied. Really, does the RIAA/MPAA have nothing better to do than send out threatening letters saying "We'll come after you if you can't control the actions of your users which is impossible since we have a bigger operating budget and we couldn't do it anyway. We think piracy costs us money despite the fact that last year was a crap year for the box office and we increased our revenue by 5%. See? Piracy = Denting Our Profits."
What the hell? I'm glad I live in Australia where nobody cares about copyright enough to enforce it and come after grandmothers.
And besides, it's not going to stop other people from moving to Bearshare, or WinMX, or Shareaza, or Gnucleus, or even Bittorrent or USENET.
Cry me a river MPAA/RIAA, maybe you should have used your extra 5% revenue to think of ways of solving the problem non-draconianly.
I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
How does a question get moderated as insightful? Interesting maybe, but not insightful.
#include ".signature"
CC on all things shared, and
taint CC's license.
You will hear the cry
from the RIAA, "You
see? CC's for thieves!"
I don't know much about this, but how would someone go about making their music licensed, but still distributable?
For one thing, you'd have to hire a musicologist and get some composer liability insurance against nuisance lawsuits alleging subconscious copying.
How will they differentiate between The Hunchback of Notre Dame and something that is not public domain and restrictive?
Walt Disney Pictures' animated film The Hunchback of Notre Dame is copyrighted. English translations of Victor Hugo's novel Notre-Dame de Paris are also often copyrighted. Any fan work based on Hugo's novel will be presumed by Disney lawyers to contain elements of its animated film unless proven otherwise.
Limewire doesn't require itself to be up-to-date to be able to use it, so just hold onto your current versions and boycott the upcoming one with this implementation.
I help a friend of mine with his band's music.
Does anybody in his band pay for composer liability insurance in case the songwriter goes and decides to pull a George Harrison?
he's not gonna wanna release his entire album under a CC license
CC by-nd-nc should provide enough freedom to get a work shared but not enough to get it commercially exploited without separate permission.
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.
If you're lying willfully about your authority to grant (sub)licenses, then fraud is still a crime in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, as well as in the rest of the developed world.
More importantly, Limewire is Open Source! If you don't like the new restrictions, just set "Is_Licensed = 1;" If past performance is any indication, within hours of this change we will see a "Limewire Lite" that is completley DRM free.
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.
The ______ Agenda
So no public-domain material can be distributed via Limewire.
If a work is in the public domain, then make a compilation consisting of that work plus your readme and then put that compilation under the Creative Commons Attribution license.
I expect that limewire will lose a lot of users because almost all of the files that I download to not have licenses. I think that many people will quit using limewire if this licensing thing goes through. I certainly will. If there are less files available, there is no reason to continue using it. Considering that limewire is free, and the other filesharing programs are also free, there is no reason to continue using limewire and i expect a sudden drop of users when the licensing comes online. I would recommend as an alternative torrentreactor.net .to or .com
I'd be more afraid if every ISP began using transparent proxies that stopped all unapproved traffic.
Check Alsee's posting history (such as this and this) and learn about Trusted Computing and Trusted Network Connect, expected to be implemented by corporate networks in 2007 and by major residential Internet service providers between 2011 and 2015. ISPs that implement TNC will not route packets from computers except those that have an active Trusted Platform Module, an approved and unmodified BIOS, an approved and unmodified operating system, and an approved and unmodified dialer program. These dialer programs will likely be designed to block spam, viruses, servers, and bandwidth hogs from the ISP's network.
So how do we create a backlash in order to prevent a wide TNC rollout from happening?
I saw a list of affiliated major record labels, but I didn't see any link for independent recording artists to offer their works on Peer Impact. Is it because Peer Impact might be afraid of lawsuits from the major labels alleging that the independent artist infringed by subconsciously copying from a song owned by a major label's affiliated publisher?
I'd have much more respect for Limewire if it simply disbanded. Detestable collaborationists.
A: Not everyone on Slashdot is the same person. Really.
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 or from Der Fuhrer's Face 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.
The ______ Agenda
it's not going to stop other people from moving to ... WinMX
Yes it is. Nobody can connect to WinMX anymore because Frontcode took down the server that listed WinMX's equivalent to ed2k's server.met or Gnutella's GWebCache.
or even Bittorrent
Watch as the RIAA and MPAA send out even more takedown letters (under the DMCA or foreign counterparts) to sites listing .torrent files, hosting .torrent files, and hosting trackers for its .torrent files.
Darnit people, did you learn nothing from AudioGalaxy's fall? They're NEVER HAPPY. AG had some batshit insanely powerful filtering that caught pretty much any song the record companies asked them to filter out, no matter how obfuscated the title got. It read tags, it hashed files... etc.
They still got shut down, after a huge outlay of cost and labor to produce that filter. They were DMCA-compliant, and got sued to death.
It's not a road you want to take your company down. Learn from the mistakes of others.
Sigh. Not that I've used LimeWire since the 90s or so, never liked the client that much. Shareaza and Azureus do it for me nowadays, with the occasional dip into Kazaa Lite if I'm feeling adventurous.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
p2p filesharing (with the weird exception provided by bittorrent's secondary use a legit way to distribute non-protected materials as well) was created for one purpose: to make available all those files that you couldn't already download for free: copyrighted materials such a software, music, video, and anything else converted to 1's and 0's.
limewire's only ability was to serve that purpose (and poorly, despite the fact it cost money). without that ability, it no longer has purpose, and will disappear.
some go out with a bang, some with a pathetic little wet fart.
Just .zip or .rar whatever liscenced work you are sharing and put it under a different name. spell it with leet, binary, whatever... unless im missing somthin here :'(
Parent suffers brain damage. LimeWire is GPL'd software.
I'm 27. My first computer was an Apple IIgs. My next computer was an 386 because that is what all the "sweet software" was available for. I was reluctant to use Windows 3.1, but eventually did. I've been a Windows user ever since.
In my college years, I used to cream over how much x86 software I could collect. It was never enough. Warez were as addictive as crack.
Now that I'm a working man, I generally only pirate the software I use at work, or at the very least, software that I feel can enhance my skillz. I'm not interested in collecting anymore, only learning. Lately, I've noticed that it has been more and more difficult to download commercial software for this purpose.
I personally think bringing down the P2P networks sucks. I don't steal movies or music anymore (I actually think iTunes is great), but I do like stealing software. It helps me be a better drone I guess.
Who is this really hurting from the crackdown on warez? Is it me, or the companies who publish the big name software?
How do you all play DVD's on Linux?
Oh, by using a patch with an opensource software that 'restricts' DVD playback?
Does anyone use bytecode interpreted truetype fonts?
Oh, that's by a patch to the freetype2 project.
What about GIFs? Does anyone remember that debacle?
How, pray tell, do you think the OpenOffice.org people are going to open up MS Office Open XML files when MS has specifically said, "This cannot be used with GPL software."
What about the distributions? Notice that SuSE requires you to download all kinds of things to build certain features. Like Acrobat, Nvidia drivers, and all manner of codecs? Sure, its automatic. But they blame the user if they "mistaken" use the protected code in a territory that doesn't permit it.
This is simple. Limewire will continue to contain all the same code as before. It's a GPL project. Question is, what happens to their paid version? Since they can no longer distribute binaries that actually *DO* anything, whats going to happen now?
Limewire with protection against non-DRM media makes little sense. It *might* work with Windows and WMA files. It could possibly work on OS X with iTunes files (but that doesn't make sense: you *bought* the dang song over the internet already, why would you need to download it *again*?", and it will *never* find anything to work with on Windows.
Limewire, as software, since its GPL will go on. Limewire as a company? I have no idea. I can't imagine a working business model.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
This might help to prevent a few people from sharing copyrighted material, but what's to stop the RIAA from suing due to the fact that someone could still find a way around the filter? Remember napster had a similar issue when it was used to trade music online. Even with the filters in place, napster had to shut down until its filters didn't even let one single copyrighted song to pass through.
Of course, what's the need of using software like limewire, kazaa, etc, go to Dmusic, allmusic.com, or even Epitomic.com. For movies, go to archive.org. For software, use your favorite search engine to look for any OSS, Freeware, or Shareware equivalent.
There is a fantastic article on Wikipedia explaining how the network works along with a list of other clients and their platform.
Losers whine about their best, Winners go home to fuck the prom queen
step1: www.versiontracker.com step2: gnutella or for osx I gues: portage/portcommander and or fink/finkcommander 3 install 4 apt-get install gtk- ____ or gnutella or what have you. By the way is it only me or have the quality of hits on these networks already been complete crap for a bit anyway? I meen for instance a local artist has a few samplese he put up looked for him by name---lots of porn with his first name (Greg--KFA irish musictian classicly trained). Same with some instructional videos and classicle music. I can't find a decent copy of Motzart Moria or a Mahlar symphany.
I have (no really, i have) sometimes found myself wanting to search only legally shared material. I have no doubt that very many people would love the idea too. The funny thing in my mind is that all the free gems out on the p2p networks drowns in comercial shit today. Get the white trash out and you have a pretty nice delivery platform for independant artists, demos and free content in general. I think the RIAA is shooting itself in the foot here.
The pirating wont stop for a second but those of us who detest todays comercial music will have a blast sifting through all the newly uncovered material. This also falls into place crating an alternative media universe free of DRM content. Who wants DRM as a customer?
*smile!*
HTTP/1.1 400
Number of files on LimeWire right now: 5.8M
Number of viruses on LimeWire right now: 4.7M
Number of files on LimeWire after this change: 3
Number of viruses on LimeWire after this change: 3
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
"These are not the links you are looking for."
There's nothing like a good gunfight to uplift the spirit--Calvin
I assume that anybody can declare a file shareable. But the *user* is the one who has to make this declaration.
This means LimeWire is not encouraging nor participating in violation of copyright.
Thus Limewire hopes to survive the lawsuits to come.
I read TFA, and I still don't quite understand how this is going to work. Do you have to register with Limewire to make yourself an artist capable of assigning licenses to files? If so, are they going to go through those registrations by hand? What's to stop me from registering myself as "Joe Shmoe" of "123 Fuck You RIAA ST." and then adding "shareable" licenses to my entire music library?
Seems to me this is just going to change things from everybody sharing MP3's to everybody sharing MP3's with "shareable" licences attached. Will the files have a differnet file extension? Like copy protected compact discs, doesn't that make these files technically not MP3's? Can Fraunhofer IIS sue for trademark infringement since Limewire is creating files it says are MP3's but aren't?
I don't think this will protect Limewire from any lawsuits either. The RIAA wants more proactive measures taken by p2p client companies. Like the sort of stuff Napster did. Unfortunately, advanced filtering and such aren't going to work on a network with no centralized server, it's another case of media conglomerates not understanding technology.
emerge --unmerge limewire
From the article:
On June 26, 2005, the United States Supreme Court remanded the MGM vs. Grokster lawsuit back to the lower courts. In a 9-0 ruling, the court stated "We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties."
Does this mean companies that produce MP3 players, VCRs, and CDR and DVDR writers to be liable as well? I would think VCRs, CDR and DVDR are infact "promoting its use to infringe copyright." Someone please explain the difference. Wouldn't PVRs such as Tivo fall under this as well?
If Limewire is not going to allow any copyrighted content on the network, then there will be absolutely no content on the network, At least in the U.S., all content is copyrighted by the originator the moment it is produced. When you doodle on a napkin, that is copyrighted.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
I noticed this after upgrading to version 4.9 last week or so.
A message box popped up declaring no license could be found for this file. There was an ignore check box though, if I remember correctly, and downloaded anyway.
See point 5 in the changelog below.
FROM LIMEWIRE:
4.9.2 (07.11.2005)
---
- Improved status bar, with new bandwidth and firewall indicators and improved shared files indicator.
- In-network upgrades. LimeWire can automatically retrieve new versions from the network.
- Media player enabling and disabling no longer requires restart.
- About LimeWire window is up-to-date, with a better architecture for internationalization.
- Show License column by default in search results and prompt when downloading a file without a license,
offering the option to remember the user's decision.
- Further Library and Download bug fixes from previous beta.
No, I do not have a right to distribute or download copyrighted material, and neither does anyone else. So your rights are not violated. What the hell is wrong with you people?
It should read "limewire to block all non-copyrighted works".
It requires each work to be approved by the rightsholder before it's allowed to be shared. This means only copyrighted works will be shared, because public domain works don't have a rightsholder.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
ixnay on the mule-e-ay!
Read carefully. Limewire users will still be able to download anything they want off the Gnutella network. However, Limewire will not SHARE copyrighted files, transforming it as the uber-leech client. Use Limewire to download copyrighted files, but never share them back. This protects the user and makes him safer from prosection, hence encouraging him to pay for the Limewire Pro registration.
Now, this will work because Gnutella is an open network, with many clients. A commercial leech client like the new Limewire will drain some ressources off the network, and in time, other clients may adapt to detect the newer Limewire versions, at which point Limewire will fight back...
But remember: Limewire may well be evil.
I thought LimeWire was Open Source? ..... I know there is at least one Open Source client out there. So all it will take, will be for just one person to insert a few comment marks in the appropriate places. Then you have a LimeWire client that doesn't impose arbitrary checks.
..... according to the principle of "innocent until proven guilty", nobody could be charged with infringement unless it could be proved that they had no intention to pay. And the idea might catch on elsewhere.
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
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Worked well for napster.
I'll never forget thise new bands such as Metallicock and performers such as Britney Shears.
Say I download a song falsely tagged as CC licensed, and then proceed to share it, am I then liable for copyright infringement?
I am trolling
Hypothetical 1: A child draws a picture of Nemo. Its pretty good and their parents are so proud that they scan it and distribute it to all their friends and family, and put it on a public site so that anyone can look at it, if they choose. Is that copyright infringement? I would have thought it would have been concidered a derivative work - as it was an original work inspired by a copyrighted object.
/. reader is messing about in Lisp and creates an AI that can interpret a conventional image and then reproduce a derivative work that looks similar. The /. reader is so proud, that he places a few of these images on /. Is that a copyright infringement?
/. readers code was GPL, a few uber geeks get together and modify the code so that it creates near perfect derivative works. If you look closley you can see that the image is nothing like the original, but within human contraints it would be concidered almost the same. They quickly realise that this method creates files substancially smaller than the original, and even though they are not copies, those who didn't study compression technologies wouldn't really be inclined to notice a difference. The files are clearly marked as genereated by this program and distributed for free. Nobody is claiming that they are copies, they arn't they are inspired works of art and distributed under the creative commons licence. Is that copyright infringement?
/. post so its not exactly a well positioned argument, but I think it shows a clear progression and abuse of the copyright law. I'm not convinced that the use of a lossy compression algorithm on copyrighted works could be concidered anything other than a synopsis of that work - if that. If you compared an MPEG2 to a DivX and H.264 created from that stream would even a single line of the source code be the same? And does the derived file have any value without an interpretor?
Hypothetical 2: A
Hypothetical 3: As the
Hypothetical 4: Joe Cracker rips a DVD, removes the CSS and Macrovision and decides to create a private members website that charges $10 a year to access on an all you can eat download basis. Other that removing the encryption no work is done the file and it is essentially the same as it was when it was sold on Amazon. Now thats got to copyright infringement, right?
This is a
I'd be interested to here what you think.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
Recently I wanted to purchase a game (Fahrenheit) that was "released" in Australia on Friday the 16th of September. Unfortunately, as of last Friday (the 23rd) it was still not on the shelves. Atari (the publisher) assures me that they're sorry about the delay, and that it'll be in stores "soon". However, it's frustrating to know that I could download it (illegally) right now, even though I'm quite prepared to pay for it.
I'm sure lots of people experience this frustration. The iTMS isn't out in Australia yet, and it's frustrating to know that new songs, not available in stores over here, are one (illegal) click away. The same goes for TV series and DVDs. There's a whole heap of stuff out there that us non-pirates have to patiently wait for, even though there are perfect copies of that same stuff floating around, ready for the picking, for free.
A colleague of mine suggested that I (illegally) download Fahrenheit (the game I want) and send a cheque for the RRP direct to the developer (i.e. the artist), along with a letter explaining my predicament and suggesting that the developer hands over whatever percentage the publisher would normally take from them. The artist would thereby be compensated for one "stolen" copy of their game, and it would be up to them to decide whether or not to compensate its publisher in turn. I realised that this model could be extended to other kinds of digital content (movies, TV series, music, software), and that a lot of people out there would be happy to pay off their "guilty conscience".
This got me thinking. How about a website (guiltyconscience.com) that accepts anonymous donations (via credit card or paypal or whatever) to allow people to pay-off the guilt they have for illegally downloading music, movies, games and so on? The website would tally up the donations received and make regular "royalty" payments direct to the artist. A user could donate $10 and spread it over 100 songs, if 10 cents a song is enough to offset their guilt. Products could be identified via their Amazon ID or similar, to allow the artist to be easily tracked down. The result would be a perfect marketplace, in that each individual defines how much they're willing to pay for something they want without knowing what others are paying. The website wouldn't promote piracy (i.e. it wouldn't help people locate and download illegal content), but it would help to offset the damage it causes. After all, aren't we constantly being told that piracy is "ripping off the artist"?
Imagine how things would change if people who pirated movies, music and software actually DID pay the artist for what they "stole". I'd be prepared to bet that the majority of people would prefer to pay something to offset their guilt if it was easy for them to do so.
WTF is a "licensed" MP3? Is the "license" in the ID3 tag or something?
Would you be able to upload these free (as in speech and beer) MP3s? 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.
One must ask, does Limewire know who's gonna benefit from this? Do we need more zombie boxes, spam bots, sniffer networks, etc. out there? Qui bono, as they say -- who benefits? Is Limewire innocently turning into a purpose-built malware distribution network, or do they somehow benefit as well?
I am not a crackpot.
All software, music, literature, and other similar materials are implicitly copyrighted once they are created unless they are explicitly assigned to the public domain, at least in the United States.
In addition, many copyrighted materials, including all software released under popular open source licenses like the GPL and the BSDL, contain explicit permission to copy, and
many shareware programs also fall into this category as do concert recordings by some bands (e.g., Grateful Dead), a number of books released under various licenses, etc.
Because of this, the implication that all "copyrighted" materials are somehow prohibited from being freely distributed is a gross oversimplification.
Instead, folks should be talking about whether or not material is being distributed in violation of its *license*.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Because of how the network is set up, can't LimeWire refuse to pass on query/ping/pong/etc packets that it feels violate copyright whenever it is an ultrapeer or g2hub? Isn't this a good way to get thousands of users to run a program that will completely fubar the entire network? I dunno; I'm just a high school student, maybe I completely failed to understand the g2 stuff I read. Someone want to tell me why this can't happen? btw, just in case, does anyone know of a way to get shareaza to refuse to connect to/accept connections from any limewire clients?
tired of online ads?
OK -- so the next version has content checking for copyrighted material in it. What I want to know is, how does LimeWire or anyone else sell this feature as a reason to upgrade? It seems to me that anyone with a current copy of LimeWire would be nuts to update, even if they were using it for sharing clean-copyright materials.
-- Gary Goldberg KA3ZYW 301/249-6501 AIM:OgGreeb Digital Marketing Inc., Bowie, MD
And the sumamry alone, I note it says "It will block non-licensed material"
So what if I wish to release my stuff on Limewire without DRM or forcing people to have a license? Are they going to block me from sharing what I'm legally allowed to share, DRM'd or not?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
It sickens me that so many of your comments are modded down. You truly have some of the most insightful comments I've ever seen.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I use a really old copy of limewire, each time I start it it asks me if I want to update and I say no, do you think they will make this new version a mandatory update?
It's all about pent up demand. The file sharing networks can't stop people from downloading something they really want to see when they want to see it.
Copyright law is a by-product of mass media. Mass media was created with Gutenberg's invention of the printing press (actually the invention of typesetting). Lessig's book "Free Culture" tells a bit about the history of copyright law.
> ... there will be a de facto requirement that all files come ...
> with some sort of license attached
As another reply stated, every file does come with "some sort of license attached": the "default license" assumed by the law almost anywhere around the world is "do not copy". So if code (as in software) can be used to induce people to consider a non default license such as a Creative Commons license it would be a good effect. It would educate people about the meaning of copyright. It would teach people about using permisions to promote the distribution of their own work. Another plus is that it would induce software developers to create tools that allows easy marking of works as distributable.
The negative effect that this "attached license" requirement might induce is that some people might learn how to attach a "redistribution allowed" license to copyrighted work they have no permision to distribute. If this happens, it can cause great trouble to the creative commons initiative. If too many such files would float around it would be impossible to tell what is sharable and what not. Imagine if someone distibuted lots of components of MSWINDOWS or MSOFFICE under the GPL (without permission, of course). How would you tell then what GPLed software is legal and what's illegal? There's a need for standard authentication to be employed together with these licensing schemes, to make it hard to abuse this system.
The problem is not with software trying to enforce copyright law. The problem is with copyright law itself, that has a chilling effect in that anything unmarked is assumed unusable. This chilling effect was unnoticable when it was hard to enforce, but now the internet provides the tools to the copyright merchants to easily scan the network for every little infringement and sue the whole world. The law that assumes "no marking" equals "no permission" was created in a different world. Nowadays it means that the costs of protecting the revenue stream of the few who profit from trafficing in copyrights is transferred to the many aho don't.
I've lost count of all of the other P2P apps that abound. While Limewire is the most popular and has an admittedly user-friendly interface, it is but one among all of the alternatives, and frankly it is perhaps an expensive alternative at that if you wish to free yourself of the free version's nag screens and go to Pro; and that isn't much better when Limewire introduces and upgrade and the nagging to upgrade and pay yet again for it.
This is all a lot of FUD. Start worrying when legislatures try to make P2P illegal. Worry instead about efforts to shut down web sites that serve as information exchanges for P2P afficiandos. If Limewire goes down the flusher it will be no loss--indeed, it will still be around as an Open Source app.