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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. "
...are the operators of usenet.
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..
For making computers, and CD and DVD burners... They're the real enemy!
This
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.
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.
It's amazing to me that the RIAA hasn't figured out that they really need to sue those bastards that wrote TCP/IP and didn't think for a minute to include DRM in the original description... They've made so much money since all the networks that operate on the protocol so viciously promote piracy of copyrighted material. They should pay for their lack of foresight.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
Thank God I use eMule.
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
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.
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...
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.
microsoft is actively encouraging hackers to write virusses, trojans, worms etc. (since the protection is so poor)
so this means microsoft must be accountable for any damage that any worm, virus, trojan etc. does to any windows pc on this planet...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Remember kids, Limewire is just a Gnutella client. If they shut down Limewire, we still have a dozen more clients we can use just as well.
Hooray for Open Source fully distributed networks!
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.)
So why aren't we suing the RIAA for giving us the music in the first place, thus allowing the music to be pirated?
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...
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
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.