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."

Comments

lol

[Anonymous Coward]

who actually uses bear share anyway?

Re:lol

[larry bagina]

currently... no one.

Re:lol

[secolactico]

I remember bearshare vaguely. Wasn't that a gnutella client with built-in spyware?

Re:lol

[linvir]

I think you mean "with advertising support".

so what you're saying is...

[larry bagina]

I just heard some sad news on slashdot - P2P/Warez appBearshare was found dead in their New York colo this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss them- even if you didn't enjoy downloading britney spears songs or installing bonzai buddy, there's no denying their contributions to FREE music. Truly a DMCA icon.

Why spare the big fish?

[bogaboga]

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!

Re:Why spare the big fish?

[larry bagina]

Some of the index servers have been seized recently.

Re:Why spare the big fish?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why spare the big fish?

[TubeSteak]

From TFA:

BearShare was among several P2P service to receive cease-and-desist letters from the RIAA in September of last year. Others include Warez P2P, Limewire, eDonkey, and Soulseek, all of whom have not yet reached a settlement.

Anyways, shutting down these businesses won't actually kill their networks. I can't think of any networks that are centralized like Napster used to be.

Re:Why spare the big fish?

[TubeSteak]

When you're logged in, go here: http://yro.slashdot.org/users.pl?op=edithome

The very first drop down box is: Date/Time Format

You can change that & /. will show whatever variation on day, date, month, year, and/or time that you could want.

and if you do a quick search, you'll find references to 2006 in the thread.

Re:Why spare the big fish?

[kimvette]

OMG, the URLs are not Y2.1K compliant. Whatever will Slashdot users do in the 2099/2100 rollover and afterward? They'll be all confoozled when they can't tell whether a DMCA article was posted in 2006 or 2106! The sky will fall, cats will be sleeping with dogs, and men will be marrying men. Oh the horror!

Re:Why spare the big fish?

[AnyoneEB]

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.

So ...

[Anonymous Coward]

The RIAA guys are paying the Bearshare company 30m right? As a compensation for redtape strongarm tactics?

WebProNews

[larry bagina]

I can't be the only one to notice... WebPronEws.

RIAA = New entourage of robber barons

[unity100]

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.

Re:RIAA = New entourage of robber barons

[Anonymous Coward]

The loss of Eldred_v._Ashcroft was bad enough. Essentially Congress now has unlimited power.

Having Supreme Court Justicies like Ruth Bader Ginsburg doesn't help. She and her mother are outspoken attorneys in favor of unlimited IP rights and unlimited congressional powers. Remember kids, if you extend a law for 50 years every 10 years, ad infinitum, that's not "unlimited"!

Now we're seeing things like the JRMI Model Train SDK project getting sued (1/2 pg. down) for $300,000.00 for infringing patents. The impact of this kind of suit on small software developers, whether free or closed, will be devastating.

And the DMCA getting new provisions that treat IP violations like drug crimes...forfiture of property! That's right, if little Bobby downloads a song from the internet, the RIAA can seize your house, car, property, etc.

Yay America! The land of freedom and liberty!

Re:RIAA = New entourage of robber barons

[the eric conspiracy]

Sorry - but your premise seems rather faulty to me. The fall in cost of reproduction and distribution seems to me to make copyright laws more relevant than less so. When it was expensive to reproduce original works, the incentive to do so is minimal and copyright laws didn't matter very much unless you happened to have the rather large capital investment sitting there in the form of a Linotype machine and a web-fed printing press. With modern technologies reducing such costs, the incentive to copy becomes much greater.

No, what we have now is a classic black market situation. With the price of the goods controlled at artificially high levels through taxation or regulation there will always be an underground trade in the goods in question, whether it be in alcohol, drugs or music. There is really no way to prevent it unless you find a strong technological countermeasure.

Re:RIAA = New entourage of robber barons

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

When it was expensive to reproduce original works, the incentive to do so is minimal and copyright laws didn't matter very much unless you happened to have the rather large capital investment sitting there in the form of a Linotype machine and a web-fed printing press.

You hit the nail on the head - back when the social compact of copyright was created - we, the people, did not give up much on our end of the bargain. Since, as you said, it wasn't easy to make copies back then, so giving up the inherent natural right to make copies was no big deal.

Now that copying is easy for anyone and everyone, that bargain is no longer so favorable to us, the people and we want to renegotiate.

The problem is, the entrenched copyright cartel thinks they don't have to renegotiate, that they can just dictate terms. That is a severe denial of reality on their part.

Re:RIAA = New entourage of robber barons

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Are you really comparing a relative monopoly on, say, energy distribution, mining, or rail transport with a trade association made up of hundreds of publishing companies representing thousands of artists?

Yes.

Because that trade association is comprised of approximately 5 large companies that together account for over 90% of the market for all media in the western, and most of the eastern, world.

That makes them an oligopoly, who is just as cut-throat and abusive as his neighbor, monopoly.

It's up to the musician to decide if they agree with you, and want to give their work away, or sell it through a different pricing model?

That's tantamount to asking if it is up to Boeing and Airbus to decide if they agree with gravity and want to make planes that work with gravity or if they should purchase a law that makes gravity illegal instead.

It is human nature to make copies of stuff we like. People have been making mix-tapes since they first invented reel-to-reel recorders and people have been making copies of books since pen and ink were first invented.

Now that the tools to make millions of digital copies for effectively no cost at all are in the hands of hundreds of millions of people, trying to outlaw human nature's desire to copy is like outlawing gravity.

These artists need to realize that the market has changed if they don't figure out how to change with it, the new gravity is going to crush them. Just like any other business that has had to deal with revolutionary changes in technology. Keep making buggy-whips and try to outlaw cars, or start building engines instead - their choice.

Re:RIAA = New entourage of robber barons

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>The fall in cost of reproduction and distribution seems to me to make copyright laws more relevant than less so.

Putting more precision on it, the effect is to make copyright less enforceable and proportionally more expensive to society at large.

An unenforceable law is a plague and a cancer. It spreads fear and encourages contempt for the law. Attempts to enforce an unenforceable law lead to the DMCA, the War on Drugs Used By Nonwhite People, and the like.

The burden of copyright didn't show up when you needed a press more expensive than a house to publish a book. Suppose it's 1940 and suppose I don't know the real numbers so I gasify that a book costs $2 to print and $.05 in royalties. The royalties don't stop publication. Fast forward to now. What does it cost to move an ebook from New York to Los Angeles? Unmeasurable. What happens when someone demands a fifty-cent royalty? That poor ebook probably doesn't get out on the Internet.

Why I'm not afraid of the RIAA

[Zaphod2016]

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.

Re:Why I'm not afraid of the RIAA

[h4rm0ny]

No they can't but when nearly everyone is guilty of something, then they can selectively enforce the laws on those they dislike. Cause enough trouble and the law will be enforced, just for you.

Best fight the new laws every which way you can. That said though, you do have a good point. A law is what certain people think. It isn't something you have to obey.

Re:Why I'm not afraid of the RIAA

[a_nonamiss]

Sorry, man. I love your attitude, and I think you are 100% correct idealogically, but that's not really how it would work. Unless you have a fair amount of money to start off with, (in the tens of thousands or more) you'll have a tough time finding a lawyer that will take this without being paid up front. It's not like you spilled hot coffee on your vagina and are suing McDonald's for $30 million. Many decent lawyers would jump at a case like that, because there is a reasonable chance that they could make bank on it. 25% of $30 million is a nice paycheck. No, in your case, the lawyer knows that the **AA will fight the case tooth and nail, regardless of whether or not they have a case. Chances are, their lawyers, which are not working on contengiency, are very, very good. They can drag it out to take up thousands of hours of your lawyers' time over a couple years. What's more, even if you do win a countersuit, a jury isn't going to award you $30 million out of sympathy. You didn't really lose anything except your time. No deaths or mutilated body parts that will make the jury feel sorry for you. No, at best, you can hope to have your legal fees reimbursed, which isn't going to be even close to 25% of $30 million. Maybe a couple hundred thousand, which your lawyer will gladly take. And there's not even a good chance of that happening.

No, my friend, you would have to pay a large retainer up front. Very large. And chances are, you would not see anything from any of that. Technically, you could win your case, but you will ultimately lose money. Yes, the system is screwed up and unfair, and the **AA knows that. Unfortunately, they are smart, and that's why they use these tactics.

Good ridance to the malware!

[IAmAI]

Nothing against file sharing, but good ridance to that malware infested excuse for a file sharing app.

Re:Good ridance to the malware!

[Motherfucking Shit]

BearShare comes with a bundled copy of SaveNow. The installer explicitly mentions this. Removing it is as simple as killing the process and running the SaveNow uninstaller from Add/Remove Programs, and doing so has no impact on BearShare's usability. I'm no fan of these bundled apps, but this is far from spyware and even malware is a stretch. BearShare is extremely up-front about exactly what is going to be installed, that's a lot more than you can say for many of these apps.

BTW, I haven't RTFA but BearShare is still alive and kicking and you can even still download the installer. As long as people still have the client, the RIAA hasn't "shut down" anything.

A valuable lesson

[Umbral Blot]

Lesson 1: Don't be centralized.

Not in fact true

[GillesL]

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.

Re:Is it centralized?

[ScrewMaster]

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.

Your view depends on your goals.

[twitter]

The fall in cost of reproduction and distribution seems to me to make copyright laws more relevant than less so. When it was expensive to reproduce original works, the incentive to do so is minimal and copyright laws didn't matter very much...With modern technologies reducing such costs, the incentive to copy becomes much greater.

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.

Re:Your view depends on your goals.

[Haeleth]

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...

Re:Your view depends on your goals.

[twitter]

... copyright is the best means we've found to compensate artists. If you have a better idea, of course, do pray share it with us.

No it's not and it's only part of the problem. The current system does not pay artists. Exclusive franchises never pay anyone but themselves and they are entirely clueless. People have been making, sharing and profiting from music long before mass production and insane copyright laws. They will continue to do so. These guys figured out how to make plenty of money and let people share their music a long time ago. You make money doing things for people. The music industry does very little of that but keeps the rewards for itself. Copyright is only one of their tools. Creative Commons is trying to pull something useful from copyright laws. You can be sure they are on the RIAA hit list.

Sometimes /. freaks me out

[alx5000]

76 replies to the year problem:

• 38 noting you can change date/time format in preferences
• 2 how-to's on doing it.
• 1 freak who actually checked all Feb 22 back to 1995.
• 3 Y2K jokes (I actually laughed at the first one)
• 4 clueless people that wouldn't read any Informative's but still complain about the damn thing
• The other 29 are just ranting about SlashCode

Yeah. It damn feels like home.