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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. "
Sun's java.com website still has LimeWire: http://java.com/en/desktop/limewire.jsp and a banner for downloading it was recently on the java.com front page.
You forgot to mention the forthcoming suits against Sun for NFS and Microsoft for Windows File Sharing (both of which work just fine over the public internet, if your firewall permits it.)
Oh, and I almost forget the forthcoming suits against the makers of FTP software!
Cthulhu for President! Why settle for the lesser evil?
When you download limewire from limewire.com, you are prompted to make the following decision before your download begins: 1) I might use LimeWire BASIC for copyright infringement. OR 2) I will not use LimeWire BASIC for copyright infringement. Case closed.
I think some people are missing the point here. LimeWire isn't under the gun because it "allows" users to illegally trade copyrighted material. The RIAA is asserting that the operators are encouraging its users to break copyright laws.
This claim is not unlike an accusation of slander. It's very difficult to truly prove that the intent of the accused was to cause harm to the accuser, yet this is the burden that the RIAA must now bear. I'm sure they have some sort of "proof" up their sleeves of LimeWire's misdeeds.
I'm in no way condoning the anti-consumer practices of the *AA as of late, but I suspect that the RIAA will win this one by precedent, sad though that may be.
"You will pay for your lack of vision..." - Emperor Palpatine to Ray Charles
That's a completely unfair comparison. Roads are essential in today's world. Give me a nice list of all the legitimate (read: legal) uses for LimeWire, and I'll believe you. I bet you can think of some, but I'm sure most people use LimeWire for illegal purposes.
Now they make be going after the wrong people, targeting the makers of LimeWire instead of the file-sharers, but a nice crackdown on illegal file-sharing sure beats some new, twisted form of DRM.
I dunno... Maybe we should talk about the groups.
Most ISP servers are worse than shit. How many people pay for a decent Use*cough*Net provider? How many of us have been paying for years and years? Paying for content is not new to us. Isn't that what the media moguls would like? Everyone paying for content?
Bring it on. Headline news please. Highlight the actual cost of bandwidth. Tell the world that 700mb costs less than $0.50. Tell the world that from the first click to a picture on the TV takes less than 30 minutes.
I've said too much, haven't I?
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
The real issue here is Copyright - what imbecilic government gave away every citizens right to copy text (or anything else) in the first place?
Have a look at the formulation of what Copyright really is - you might have to read it a couple of times to actually understand it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright - I think the example with "Disney's particular anthropomorphic mouse" is a good one..
Maybe people don't understand it but just think that it shouldn't ever feel wrong to download, transfer or otherwise 'copy' a string of bits (ones and zeroes).
Consider this: If I make a T-shirt filled with ones and zeroes of a copyrighted text, am I infringing copyright? What if it's the ROT-13 version of the same text? Or the same text, just mirror-reversed? (which you can practice to read as fast as normal text, or just use a mirror..)
My point is; abstraction defeats copyright, therefore it shouldn't have been written into law in the first place. People downloading/copying copyrighted text or otherwise, is basically civil disobedience.
Another way of defeating copyright is;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft
Next up; Software Patents: http://wiki.ffii.org/IstTamaiEn
Privacy begins with
Nobody's in charge of the gnutella network---there's nobody to sue. (Side note: we all know about freenet and its drawbacks, but have any of the other projects that claim a goal of being faster and better than freenet gotten anywhere yet?)
:-/
Hence, the RIAA will systematically sue every gnutella-capable software package they can track down. They can't sue things that are produced in countries outside their jurisdiction, but, that won't stop them from: (a) spying on you so they can sue people who download said programs [this is one advantage to freenet: some anonymity], (b) passing legislation to make it illegal to possess or write software that can be used to violate copyrights (DMCA et al)
Where do I write a complaint letter? I use programs like limewire to share my creative-commons music (and other artists' similarly-licensed music) with both friends and strangers. Are they trying to deny me the opportunity to use a different distribution model for my music? P2P is great, because I don't have to shell out big bucks for bandwidth.
That sounds like CD-distribution music companies trying to destroy non-CD-distribution music companies... it looks a lot like monopolistic behavior to me.
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive