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Bearshare Shut Down by RIAA

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the another-one-bites-the-dust dept.

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."

5 of 269 comments (clear)

  1. Why spare the big fish? by bogaboga · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The Emule network is bigger. Why spare it? I have just checked it out and find that the available files now are 677.5 million with about 11 million users. Heck, this beast is huge!

    1. Re:Why spare the big fish? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      If you do some lookups on the IPs and corresponding owners of some of the most popular eMule servers (Untouchable 2.0, for instance), you'll see that they're owned by anti-piracy firms. They are most likely logging and building evidence for further litigation by the RIAA.

      I imagine they see it as being more worthwhile to their cause to moniter these networks and sue users than shut them down and risk a more secure/anonymous service replacing them.

      Be very careful what servers you allow your client to connect to; always doublecheck who owns them and their corresponding nameservers.

    2. Re:Why spare the big fish? by AnyoneEB · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Traditional eDonkey requires servers, at least. Of course, if every eDonkey server got shut down, then the network would probably improve because then everyone would be connected to Kad.

      --
      Centralization breaks the internet.
  2. Not in fact true by GillesL · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Considering that I went to Bearshare website... got the software and got a song "Let it be" by the Beatles... about 1 minute ago, I would say that the story is not exactly true.

  3. Re:Your view depends on your goals. by Haeleth · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    Diminishes, perhaps. But it will never vanish, because you have to take into account the cost of production as well as the cost of distribution. Music and movies and books do not spring into existence fully formed: somebody needs to sit down and expend a considerable amount of time and effort -- and hence money -- creating them.

    Limited copyright is essential as a means of enabling them to recoup that. The GP's point is that as the cost of copying diminishes, it becomes easier and easier for society to say "I like that song, but I can copy it for free, so I don't have to pay you for it." And at that point, the incentive to write another great song is gone... and society is the poorer.

    Therefore, as the cost of copying diminishes, it becomes necessary either to enforce copyright law more strictly, or to find another means of compensating artists for their work. Right now, however, copyright is the best means we've found to compensate artists. It's not perfect, any more than capitalism and democracy are perfect; it's just that all the other systems anyone's ever proposed are even worse. If you have a better idea, of course, do pray share it with us.

    The spirit of America is that you are free to do what you want but no one owes you a living.

    Nobody owes you one, sure. But if society doesn't allow you to make a living doing something, you aren't going to do it. So you could say that society owes it to itself to provide artists with a living...