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Bearshare Shut Down by RIAA
Pichu0102 writes "According to WebProNews, Bearshare has been shut down by the RIAA." From the article: " Online file-sharing service BearShare, along with operators Free Peers Inc., is packing it up due to a $30 million settlement with the recording industry. The conditions of the settlement were agreed to by the P2P company to avoid further copyright infringement litigation."
who actually uses bear share anyway?
But different from the times of Teddy Roosevelt, this time they are hiding behind outdated intellectual property laws from the last century - the times when something was reproducable and distributable at great cost. The cost of reproduction and distribution of intellectual property items (mainly songs, text, publications etc) have taken a deep dive, but prices have not. They want to preserve this profit margin, and they are maintaining a rightful face because of the a century old laws.
But in fact, what they are doing is a new style of Robber Baron practice.
We need a new Teddy Roosevelt.
Read radical news here
I first learned about BearShare and LimeWire aroud the same time. Mid-2000 if memory serves. Napster had recently "gone down" and I was still in the middle of my "wow- I missed 100's of years worth of awesome music" phase.
Ok, so here come the "RIAA is evil" rants. I can accept that (after all, this is /.). However, please consider:
One of the major anti-RIAA arguments around these parts is that they don't actually do anything to benefit anyone. I agree 100%. But that said, how can we cry over a company which made ad revenues based on pirated content? Scum versus scam: who cares who wins? We are the losers.
In six years, I could have downloaded more music than I will ever have the time to listen to. Long before BearShare went down, tons of new p2p services appeared. The RIAA can keep playing "whack-a-mole" for the next 100 years (and I'm sure they intend to) but "Joe User" will *still* be "illegally" downloading and sharing the "Black album" no matter how many times the drummer of Metallica cries about it.
barack to the future?
Nothing against file sharing, but good ridance to that malware infested excuse for a file sharing app.
It is the same with the RIAA. These and DEA "folks" will keep on busting some high profile targets, but the iceberg like underground trading will forever go on
It has always been like this, and will be, even if the "boston strangler" steps in
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
Lesson 1: Don't be centralized.
Philosophy.
No big deal at all. Bearshare is but a tiny fish in a HUGE ocean.
Another company gone thanks to an out-of-court settlement due to RIAA's lawyer army and economical advantage. They've really found out a working model for being right regardless what a boring test in court would say. Your tool can be used to infringe on copyright, therefore it should not exist, and no one has anything to say about the lack of logic in that argument. *AA and all those companies that live on registering, then suing for patent infrigements should merge to form a Coalition of Law Abusing Powers. Now that would be really scary... :-P Corporations that harvest the economy crops on destroying things rather than constructing. Unfortunately for the media business, they need the latter today, not the former, assuming they wish to keep their customers that is. It's a funny world when you're better supported by pirates than iTunes if you wish to use your music.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
It is still a hit against data freedom, and yet another win for the 'opressive movement' and 'assumed guilt'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
This is yet another high-profile "victory" in the RIAA's neverending and largely ineffective propaganda campaign. Will it have any practical effect upon the popularity of file sharing? Probably not, but the RIAA looks good, and it does set a nice precedent when it comes to suing other outfits like Limewire. Too bad there's so many nice open source multi-platform Gnutella clients out there.
If the management of the RIAA's member companies were to take a long, hard look at what the RIAA has actually accomplished (e.g., alienated the customer base, eliminated profitable new recording technologies, and given the whole business a black eye, PR-wise) they might begin to wonder about the RIAA's relevance to the modern world. Although, in truth, companies like Sony have management that is just as sleazy, and are perfectly capable of alienating customers without the RIAA's dubious assistance.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Make it legal. After all, how much of your taxes are going on enforcement?
Deleted
Whats the difference between:
a) taking a CD, ripping the song to a lower-quality format like an mp3 and then making hundreds of copies of it; and,
b) taking copyrighted printed material, and then making hundreds of photocopies of it?
Think of the billions of documents illegally photocopied every year.
By the Supreme Court's own logic, unless Xerox can find a way to prevent photocopying of copyrighted documents, they must cease and desist selling photocopiers. And since we all know thats not going to happen, I guess someone really needs to sue Xerox.
You have completely missunderstood the purpose of copyright and give undue importance to all the wrong things. If the goal of copyright is to make money for publishers, your reasoning is correct. If the goal of copyright is to "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries", you are wrong. The original term of US copyrights was 14 years, despite the tremendous cost of publishing at the time. The goal is to spread information and culture, not to make sure a bunch of greedheads have money. As the cost of that spread declines, the time required to recoup costs diminishes and vanishes. The spirit of America is that you are free to do what you want but no one owes you a living. Exclusive franchises were hated then and should be today.
The RIAA are demanding government protection from legitimate competitors and a defacto control of culture. If you don't understand this, you don't understand how the music industry works. It's not so much your ability to get music that matters to them, it's their inability to control what you are exposed to that scares them to death. They seek to perpetuate an empire of control based on the technical limitations of 20th century broadcast and recording technology and a great deal of racketeering. Without RIAA only stores, selling junk sampled on the nations three radio networks, the world's big three music publishers start to look as good or worse than any other music publisher. Musicians and artists would then be able to market themselves freely and keep more of their earnings and the industry would collapse. Make no mistake at the level of control they seek with DRM and broadcast flags. They want the ability to limit what you are exposed to and are willing to pay for and then to squeeze you for every play while paying the artist next to nothing. The riches they earn are based on exclusion and extortion, not on the promotion of excellence and that directly contradicts the purpose of copyright.
In a world of cheap publishing there should be as many publishers as there are artists. Why not? Anyone can set up a web page. There's no longer a technical reason to reject any manuscript and not offer it to the public. The previous legitimate purpose of publishers, to chose and promote excellence, has been also co-opted by web. Copyright laws, based on paper and mechanical copy are insanely restrictive and obsolete.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
What happens if I've had it installed for over a year. . .this reminds me of Kazaa Lite K++, even after it was taken off servers if you had the program already you were still set. What are they really accomplishing?