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RIAA Goes after LimeWire
PCM2 writes "A coalition of major recording companies sued the operators of the file-sharing program LimeWire for copyright infringement Friday, claiming the firm encourages users to trade music without permission." From thge article: " The case is the first piracy lawsuit brought against a distributor of file-sharing software since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that technology companies could be sued for copyright infringement on the grounds that they encouraged customers to steal music and movies over the Internet. In the complaint, the record companies contend LimeWire's operators are "actively facilitating, encouraging and enticing" computer users to steal music by failing to block access to copyright works and building a business model that allows them to profit directly from piracy. "
The RIAA and MPAA are teaming up to sue the highway patrol of all states with interstates that border on other states for failing to stop them and prevent them from allowing friends to copy their DVD's and CD's.
I had a sucky sig.
This is like sueing Remington because guns make it easier to kill people.
"You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm." - S. G. Colette
Xerox should be sued for first marketing the photocopier.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
Or computer manufactuers, maybe just CD burner or hard disk makers. They all equally "allow" people to pirate via their resources. Just as much as limewire does at least..
Based on that complaint, it sounds more like they're passively encouraging people, at best.
Either that or the fact that I've never held up a stop sign in the middle of the street means that I'm actively encouraging people to run red lights.
It might be a good idea right now to use SVK to mirror the whole limewire SVN repository, before it gets pulled from the net.
CAPTCHA: thefts
Although it is a file-sharing program, of all the ones I've used, Limewire is the one that actively DISCOURAGES copyright infringement the MOST.
I guess the RIAA couldn't go very long without finding another way to annoy the crap out of everyone...
Whether LimeWire encourages people to break copyright laws will be left up to the courts, and you can bet that this will reach all the way to the supreme court. LimeWire's main defense here is the little "I might use LimeWire BASIC for copyright infringement." and "I will not use LimeWire BASIC for copyright infringement" radio buttons on the download page. Whether this counts as a binding agreement between LimeWire and the users in such a way that it relieves LimeWire of the responsibility to monitor for and stop copyright infringement is still quite up in the air. I think what's going to kill LimeWire is the offer of LimeWire pro... charging for and profitting from this is going to put a lot more responsibility in their hands.
And to everyone saying "The RIAA/MPAA is just trying to stop people from watching their stuff without paying" in this case is a strawman argument... this case is about stopping a corporation from directly profiting on the copyright infringement of their legally held intellectual property. Whether or not you believe that Copyright is morally repugnant, it is still protected by law. And it is really hard to claim civil disobedience when you are making a profit.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
Next they'll sue people who make simple ftp servers on the same grounds, then the IETF for coming up with file transfer protocols, then anyone having anything to do with routable networks like DARPA and while we're at at it, why not just sue the people who melt sand to make fiber optics and mine the copper that makes our cables for not explicitly "failing to block access to copyright works". Shoot, we should just sue people for existing.
--Let's hack root on 127.0.0.1 --panZ
They should never have ruled that it was ok to go after software makers like this. Its the users fault, unless you want to rule them sub-human and not capable of controlling them selves.
According to their last ruling, for a software like this to be considered OK there must be overwhelming legal use of the software.
That is completely wrong. The Grokster case did not remove the Sony rule. It added a new, independent theory of infringement that bypasses Sony. This rule has nothing to do with how the technology is used. Rather, it has to do with how the defendant acted and what the defendant said. If the defendant expected and provoked infringements, he's liable, even if there were only a few of them and the technology was overwhelmingly used lawfully.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
STFU!
Usenet? Nothing to see here RIAA/MPAA, please move along.
I almost hate to talk about this subject, not because I feel seasoned or elite but only because I do fear a potential radar sighting. At a very slow but steady pace, the brontosaurus that is Usenet, is getting more flexibility on the front end. The days of manually saving and piecing together messages in the right order and piping them to the right converter went away well over a decade ago. It can now be just a few clicks if you choose. The fact that in order to have a reasonable quality of Usenet service requires a monthly fee is the only thing I believe that is keeping it under that radar but that same more centralized consolidated pay service is easier to attack and shut down.
When the comet comes, the brontosaurus will have to adapt or die.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
As we all know, we really put a stop to those illegal drug sales by going after the "heads of the snakes" there. Wanna-be drug users just can't find someone willing to supply them anymore, most of the time!
Oh, wait....
I get the logic, but there's a fundamental flaw. You can't effectively stop the masses from breaking an arbitrary restriction placed on an activity if the masses feel what they're doing is justified.
If LimeWire shuts down tomorrow, a programmer will be out there coding the next replacement for it - only with additional protections to make it harder than before to track the source of the traffic.
Shut that down, and another will pop up, and another, and.....
If it finally proves not too effective to do p2p sharing at all, due to the "law" constantly putting a stop to it - people will resort to more "guerrila" tactics (as they've already done many times before). Things can be uploaded with non-obvious filenames and folder names, to random servers (or even web or ftp sites that passwords were hacked on in advance) - and private message forums can provide the short-lived and always rotating links to them.
VPN tunnels can be set up from point to point between trusted parties and files interchanged on their makeshift WANs.
Individuals can offer files through their IM clients.
Of course, Usenet is utilized too, and it doesn't seem practical to successfully put a stop to it.
People might even wish to set up email list servers that distribute attached files to those who know the secret commands to email to get signed up and request them.
Don't forget all the other alternatives, such as running telnet-based BBS software. (Kind of a "retro" solution, but like opting to run Windows 3.1 to use the Internet on your PC and thereby dodging almost all the trojan horse spyware, might be effective through obscurity, at least for a while.)
Listen up, pigopolists. LimeWire isn't responsible. YOU are responsible. Your rampant, unchecked greed is the reason we download music using P2P instead of obtaining it directly from you for a nominal fee. LimeWire may be the current conduit, but you are not going to stop P2P by stopping LimeWire. In fact, you are making your own lives more difficult by encouraging the P2P community to devise and deploy a new music sharing system that has no central controlling entity that you can sue. The more heavy-handed you get with us, the harder we are going to fight back. We are NOT going to succumb to your greed. You made your bed, now you can f$%*ing sleep in it.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Limewire is allready open source, you can download it right here: http://www.limewire.org/limewire.zip . The community site for it is http://limewire.org/ . So therefor, if limewire gets sued, there is still frostwire http://frostwire.org/ which is a fork of limewire, and provides same functionality. Frostwire isn't run by an organization so it would be pretty hard to sue.
Actually, the word "encouraged" suggests that may have been a rather extended nap which stretched into the class on aiding and abetting as well...
For quite a while now, I have been trying to get my own music (ie that I create) onto the limewire network. I *want* people to steal my music. I want to get it on other people's boxes in their shared folder.
Its not as easy as you think.
You would think, all you have to do, is to fire up a client, put your music in your shared folder, and leave it up for people to download and wait for the fireworks to commence.
There's one problem. Nobody downloads your music. Because nobody searches for it. And worse, nobody downloads music anymore.
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Nobody gives a crap about your music unless you push it in front of them, put it in front of their face. That is the reality. The music business is a push business. Any artist that stays popular is popular because they have an active campaign to push it to people.
Okay, fair enough...
Now I give my music away for free on Myspace, and push it heavily. Over 60,000 people have downloaded my music, and 6,000 my music videos.
But there's a problem. Nobody wants to download music anymore. Because there's an ocean of music out there. They all want to just stream it.
People just don't buy music anymore. Period. Its a challenge to get it out there when YOUR GIVING IT AWAY. Forget selling it. That's laughable.
So when you hear these cases of RIAA suing on behalf of these artists, consider this. Nobody wants that media, those artists are washed up because the business is washed up. There is no music business anymore. The only possible way to make money is to sue people because nobody buys their stuff anymore.
The media business has tanked. Because its oversaturated with people competing extremely hard for money that just is not there. Its bizarre actually.
Try to publish something, anything, as a small operation, and you will see how incredibly hard it is to get it into wide distribution, and that's without any cost barrier standing in the way. Once you impose a cost/ where people have to buy it, you can be assured you are dooming yourself to grinding to a halt.
The truth of the matter is there is no music business. Someone just put the words music + business together, like they did easter + bunny, but in both cases, neighter really exists. Its a big farce and lie.
Good luck making a dime at it or even selling 5 cd's, you'll see quite quick and erase any illusions you may have. The sad thing is, millions of neophyte bands live on that dream of the MTV cribs illusion, when its just that, people frontin. There is nothing ahead for them. If they do succeed, its nothing but grueling hard work for five cents on the dollar, what you would be making with your time working at a fast food restaurant.
From TFA "...building a business model that allows them to profit directly from piracy."
So if there's a business model that DIRECTLY profits from piracy AND the RIAA acknowledge this, more than that it's their entire argument, then why isn't the music industry adopting this well-defined business model that gives them money DIRECTLY from piracy?
Hypocritical, one might say, but they are anyway.