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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?
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/
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;
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
...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.)
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.
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...
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 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...
Now, while I agree with you on the Slashdot schizophrenia re: GPL violations vs. IP violations, this bit is just plain silly:
"The RIAA is evil because the websites tell me so, so I'm going to ensure that System of a Down doesn't get paid today, which somehow is good for System of a Down!"
That's not the argument. The argument is that file sharing of copyrighted works improves sales of good products. My own anecdotal evidence would be that I'd never have found my favorite music group if I hadn't been sent an MP3 by a friend on the 'Net.
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.
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)
CC on all things shared, and
taint CC's license.
You will hear the cry
from the RIAA, "You
see? CC's for thieves!"
Nowhere. The Limewire fork will be out faster than all use pirates can say 'arrrgh me hearties'
Pre-canned Evolution Links for all those Slashdot holy wars.
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.
Nor will it stop anybody create a fork of Limewire with the copy protection stuff removed.
Pre-canned Evolution Links for all those Slashdot holy wars.
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
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
And the final -10% are often miscalculated, anyway.
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!
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!
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.
Say I download a song falsely tagged as CC licensed, and then proceed to share it, am I then liable for copyright infringement?
Yes, but you would have a better chance of aruging down the damages. However in no case is the judge permitted to reduce the damages below $200 per infringment. The legal term is "innocent infringer". If you are absolutely 100% innocent, yet you still created infringing copies through no fault of your own, the minimum damage is $200 per infringment. You also bear the legal burden of proving in court that you are an innocent infringer.
Guilty until proven innocent, and if an innocent infringer you still have to pay damages.
Copyright law is strict liability and draconian. You're pretty much better off robbing a couple hundred CDs from a music store. In fact under copyright law a large fraction of our entire population are technically felons, probably a few tens of millions of people. Virtually anyone who has ever used P2P at all is technically a felon. If copyright law where to be fully enforced our entire country would collapse overnight.
The only reason copyright law is tolerated at all is because it is virtually never enforced, and when it is enforced it is virtually always settled/plea-bargained. The penalties for prosecution and convition are just to dangerous to risk.
Hell, the RIAA sued one college student for 97+ billion dollars. Yes, B as in billion. They sued him for an amount greater than the dollar value of the entire US music industry revenues for the last seven years. The statutory limit is $150,000 dollars per infringment, and this student had set up a "Google-like" search engine so that any student could search for any file that any other student on campus might be making available. The RIAA filed suit based on every single file of every single student on campus, at the $150,000-per legal limit.
That college student accepted the settlement offer for umpteen thousand dollars. I think he had to get a job and pay it off over time.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.