LimeWire Likely To Shut Down Soon

suraj.sun quotes from a CNET story: "A federal court judge has likely dealt a death blow to LimeWire, one of the most popular and oldest file-sharing systems, according to legal experts. On Wednesday ... US District Judge Kimba Wood granted summary judgment in favor of the ... [RIAA], which filed a copyright lawsuit against LimeWire in 2006. In her decision, Wood ruled Lime Group, parent of LimeWire software maker Lime Wire, and founder Mark Gorton committed copyright infringement, induced copyright infringement, and engaged in unfair competition. 'It is obviously a fairly fatal decision for them,' said [an industry defense lawyer]. 'If they don't shut down, the other side will likely make a request for an injunction and there's nothing left but to go on to calculating damages.'" The article notes that LimeWire is used by nearly 60% of the people who download songs.

Comments

And nothing of value was lost

[Prien715]

And nothing of value was lost. Seriously, who uses an inefficient cruddy program like Limewire when you've got bit torrent?

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[eldavojohn]

And nothing of value was lost. Seriously, who uses an inefficient cruddy program like Limewire when you've got bit torrent?

But if they shutdown Limewire, where will my sister get all her Windows viruses from?

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Endo13]

Exactly what I was going to post. Not to mention a huge percentage of the stuff on there was fake already a few years ago. I can't imagine it's gotten any better.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

It was as if a million viruses embedded in Britney Spear's singles cried out in terror, then were suddenly silenced.

I fear something awesome has happened.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[black88]

You said it, brother.

Also, RIP Ronnie James Dio, the world has lost a giant!

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[ScrewMaster]

And nothing of value was lost. Seriously, who uses an inefficient cruddy program like Limewire when you've got bit torrent?

You don't use a torrent to grab a three or four meg file: swarming protocols work best for sharing large files.

The Gnutella network was, and is, very efficient at sharing small files (you know, the kind that keep media executives up at night.) That said, there are plenty of other ways to share such information, and all the RIAA has done is to (once again) continue the game of whack-a-mole. There are many other Gnutella clients available (personally, I like Phex: multi-platform, open-source, and does what I need. Pick it up on SourceForge) and people will quickly find them. Let the lawyers celebrate their "victory", for whatever it's worth.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

where will my sister get all her Windows viruses from?

I see what you did there!

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[ducomputergeek]

A lot of non-tech people who don't understand he difference between Bit Torrent let alone what Bit Torrent even is. Although, usually when I see Windows machines infected or doing strange things at the local coffee shop, the person has lime wire installed.

My understanding was there were more virus and other malware infected stuff on limewire than just about any other source. Granted that was a few years ago.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Endo13]

You don't use a torrent to grab a three or four meg file: swarming protocols work best for sharing large files.

Most people these days who used to use limewire now use torrents to download albums and band collections, then use iTunes to pick up the odd track here and there that was too much trouble to get from a torrent.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[sznupi]

Let the lawyers celebrate their "victory", for whatever it's worth.
Reply to This

But is is a victory...they got their fat paychecks over the years. Part of them possibly bonuses.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[nomadic]

Seriously, who uses an inefficient cruddy program like Limewire when you've got bit torrent?

Or itunes, or Amazon's MP3 store. Oops, wait, I forgot I shouldn't admit I actually feel a moral obligation to actually pay for the music I buy on slashdot.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

For MP3s, it's actually perfectly fine. I've never gotten anything troublesome from LimeWire. Search results are always crowded with garbage, but the spam is so crude that you'd have to be a moron to download it:

Pretend Example Search: kate bush wuthering heights

1. "kate bush wuthering heights.mp3"

Do not download files whose names are identical to your search

2. "Kate Bush - Wuthering Heights.wmv"

Do not download WMVs

3. "Kate Bush - Wuthering Heights.mp3 ~ 3kB"

Sort by size and find something near 1MB-per-minute

4. "Kate Bush - Wuthering Heights.mp3 (rare live recording)"

Strangely, every song ever recorded has a "rare live recording" that you probably shouldn't download.
5. "underage porn sex girl with horse and dog"

Even if you WERE looking for filthy, illegal porn you'd have to be an idiot to download that. But man, there are a lot of files with names like that.

So you search, sort by size, download something with a sane name of the right size, and probably never play it in WMP, just to be safe.

But really? The "index of" Google search has largely replaced LimeWire for me anyway. It's fast, it's easy, you don't spew your hot, sticky IP all over the Gnutella network, you can use it from any smartphone with a web browser...it's gotten extremely polluted with fake spam index-of sites, but there are also sites that helper filter the spam sites.

BitTorrent just seems like a waste of energy for music...but I don't really know why. I suppose it works as well for small files as large... it just feels like more work to search for something so small in the browser, open it in a new app, clutter uTorrent with a thousand tiny downloads...

LimeWire still has a place in my heart.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Darkness404]

Good luck finding a decent torrent for small files. Yeah, BitTorrent is great for downloading a 700 MB Ubuntu ISO, yeah, its great for getting every song a band sang, ever. But, for downloading a single song or other small files? BitTorrent is pretty terrible.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[sznupi]

Now, now, don't underestimate RIAA too much - if people were to switch to BT, where full albums are the norm, just imagine how much damages then the "industry" can claim!

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Endo13]

BitTorrent just seems like a waste of energy for music...but I don't really know why. I suppose it works as well for small files as large... it just feels like more work to search for something so small in the browser, open it in a new app, clutter uTorrent with a thousand tiny downloads...

BitTorrent's role in music sharing is mainly for albums and artist collections. You know, like say if you wanted the complete works of the Beatles. When your typical MP3 player has room for tens of thousands of tracks, you're a lot more likely to look for those large collections to save time, if for no other reason. Got the space, may as well fill it up.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[ThePhilips]

The question you should be asking yourself is: after whom they'd go next?

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[larry bagina]

is "singles" slang for ass, mouth, or vag? I'm not quite sure from the context...

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[black88]

What I tend to do is, if there is a song on an album that I need, I will just download the torrent, open it in utorrent, and only choose to download that particular song.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[linzeal]

I know maybe 2 or 3 people who actually use iTunes to buy not organize music. Is it more popular in the under 30's or something, because everyone I know either buys CDs/LPs or pirates everything.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[pipatron]

I always want the complete album from an artist, and I usually also want it in FLAC format if available. That makes each download about 200-500MB. There are very good music oriented bittorrent trackers out there, taking over after the previous gem "oink", where you know that everything you download will be well seeded, will not contain any virus or misplaced songs etc. what.cd being one good example. You say it's more work to search for something so small, I say it's more work to sift through the spam and random-quality files on those other networks. :)

The reasons they can maintain that kind of quality are also the drawbacks with it: they are invite-only, and you need to keep seeding or else you're kicked out. This might make it more difficult for the average joe that only want a couple of songs now and then and don't really mind if it's a 128kbps mp3 or a wma or whatever.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

That's actually a bad thing. Now they will go after Bit Torrent more, both the idiots using Limewire and the idiots attacking the idiots using any of them.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Endo13]

It's a lot more popular with the under 25's. Particularly the ones whose parents bought them whatever they wanted from iTunes while they were teens.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Doctor_Jest]

Sometimes its just nice to save a step between the LP you still have and your MP3 player. Now I know the studios want you to "buy it again", but I prefer either recording it myself via a USB turntable, or if I've no time for that, the disc is available via torrent.

I don't feel it's infringing on copyright, since I own the album. (And that is also true for out-of-print CDs and LPs as well.) I mean, I could track them down used, but that doesn't "give money to the artist".... So their argument is moot. That said, I'm not a "collector" of music in that I get discogs of every band and scour the web for bootlegs. I like the album enough to buy it, and I like the album enough to want it on my iPod... shouldn't be too difficult. (I know we're treading on "legal gray areas", but sometimes we just have to use a little common sense...Something the RIAA hasn't had, well, ever.)

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[mikael_j]

Well, here in Sweden it seems almost no one uses iTunes to buy anything. The main reasons for this seem to be:

1. Spotify - Lots of people who are "casual" music listeners just use Spotify, it's like listening to the radio except you get the songs you want.
2. File sharing started early here in Sweden - Which means that for-pay services lagged behind regular file sharing even further than in a lot of other places.
3. No TV shows on iTunes - I've heard a lot of people here say they'd be more inclined to use iTunes to buy stuff if they could also pay for TV shows, not possible here in Sweden though.
4. Downloading music, TV shows and Movies used to be legal/semi-legal up until quite recently - It was basically made illegal because the content industry told our politicians that we'd be transformed into a Internet equivalent of a third world country otherwise.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[MokuMokuRyoushi]

While it may not have any inherent value, here's a purpose it served for me - disposable decoy. With LimeWire in a legal headlock, the other, much more useful programs, protocols and services are going to come under attack now.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[zmollusc]

Yeah, like the music industry can afford expensive lawyers after losing trillions of dollars per day to teh pirates. Those lawyers will have been on less than minimum wage.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[pushing-robot]

Most decent clients will let you download only specific files from a torrent.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck finding a decent torrent for small files. Yeah, BitTorrent is great for downloading a 700 MB Ubuntu ISO, yeah, its great for getting every song a band sang, ever. But, for downloading a single song or other small files? BitTorrent is pretty terrible.

what do you mean, if a torrent contains a zip file of an entire album, you can download just one song from it.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

The "Geek Squad" (TM Best Buy) will go out of business! They get 60 - 70 % of their business cleaning spyware and viruses from Limewire users!

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[adona1]

Exactly! Oh, except Amazon won't let me pay for their mp3s because I don't live in America. Plus I run Windows so putting iTunes on it is one of the less clever things I could do.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Larryish]

Bittorrent is excellent for downloading individual files.

Most torrent clients allow you to download individual files from a collection via some sort of Properties dialog.

You get the .torrent for the entire album or collection. Then when you load it in your client you go to the Properties/Files dialog and uncheck every song or file except those that you wish to download.

It is good for things like John Mayer albums, where most of the songs on the new album are repeats of songs from the previous album.

A lazy bastard, he is.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

If you lucky enough to know the, uh, correct website, torrent is one of the BEST (if not the best) ways to get music. You can choose from a variety of formats, and bitrates. These same sites normally will also have rules in place that music can not be a transcode (conversion between bitrates which causes lose in sound quality ... like taking a picture that has been shrunk, then enlarging it. This being done sometimes more than once) - which you are likely to get from such programs as LimeWire, or some random website. If you want just one song, you do not have to download the whole album for a single song. You can choose to download just one when you select the torrent with the album. What is also better is that you are almost always will have people sharing, and they are eager to share because of rules that require the maintaining of a ratio (uploaded divided by downloaded). This results in a large library, with a large number of people willing to use their bandwidth to upload to you.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

what.cd

The same rule about Usenet goes for What.cd, damnit!

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry. I'm sure you can find all your income elsewhere.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

I have 150 dollars in iTunes cards and I still have not found anything I want to buy.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

Same anonymous poster here.

Yeah, I'm definitely the "one or two songs" type, which explains why I've stuck to LimeWire and Google.

In my life, I think I've only deliberately listened to two albums from beginning to end (Paul Simon's Graceland, and Comfort Eagle). I am considered to have terrible taste in music, and a predilection for hooks and strong themes.

I also skimp on my internet (3mb/s down), so downloading an album is a lot of pain to me for almost no gain.

File Sharing Bonus: Captcha = "seeded"

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[angelwolf71885]

i thought the geek squad was in the business of INSTALLING virus's onto machines in order to peddle there anti virus and crapware remover that removes nothing

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Barny]

Oh don't worry, enough of the shoddy torrent tracking and search sites have a smitfraud based scare-ware lurking in a banner ad, and of course she still uses IE for browsing :)

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[b4upoo]

There are two ways to go with this. One is to rename Limewire Glimewire or some other similar name and locate it in a nation that does not honor use laws. The other is to find an individual who is safe from legal actions due to owning nothing etc. and put the entire operation in his name. That will put the existence of the tool in operation beyond any real reach of law.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Ash Vince]

And nothing of value was lost. Seriously, who uses an inefficient cruddy program like Limewire when you've got bit torrent?

I always wondered why everyone uses a centralised system like bittorrent to illegally download other peoples hard work when the gnutella network existed. It might be less efficient and slightly slower to find what you want, but at least they will never be able to shut it down completely. I know this may result in the death of Limewire, but that was not exactly the only Gnutella client in existence.

The fact is the gnutella's inefficencies are also in many ways its benefits.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[nomadic]

You should move. And why is itunes one of the "less clever" things you could do?

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[BLKMGK]

No, still true. Had a kid's computer over here a week ago and found three files pegged as viruses - weird thing is they were using the MP3 file identifier. I'd have gone further trying to figure it all out but had no desire to risk my machine and the HDD was dying on me. Sure enough he had Lime on there - I just shook my head... Oh and all of his music files were poorly tagged, low bitrate, and really bizarre CRAP. Sadly there was also almost no p0rn to save. Lime had some of THE weirdest p0rn I've ever seen!

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[BLKMGK]

Who the hell zips up a file that's already compressed?! You ain't going to save much zipping MP3 and the little you do save isn't worth it over the advantage of having many smaller files. I'm not sure I've ever seen a zipped up music collection anyplace I'd care to download from.

And really, if you want onesy twosy music files head for Amazon's music store to get them. $99 is nothing for a song and the quality from them is decent.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

But if they shutdown Limewire, where will my sister get all her Windows viruses from?

Is she hot? If so, I got a couple of viruses stored away on a floppy.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[oakgrove]

Same here except for utorrent (I use transmission in Ubuntu). The only thing is, what if you want a certain cut of a particular song that isn't the album version. Also, it's a bit faster, for me, to just click on Frostwire and type in my search term vs finding the item on a torrent search engine, plucking the particular track out of the album, and downloading that way. Usually for a particular song, I guess I just find Frostwire to be a bit quicker on the draw.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem with what.cd is just like any other warez sites that are private. Once you are l33t enough that they let you in, you usually have far better contacts and probably can get far better music from a private network.

For proles who don't have people who are able to get the CDs before they hit the DJs, places like Demonoid and what.cd are pointless. Usually if you try to find contacts, you end up encountering scammers, or music industry shills.

Screw that. Life is too short to do the 2010 version of hanging in #warez5 for days on end with xdcc running and hoping for an invite to #warez4.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

All good, except for the fact it's nearly impossible to actually get into those sites. I've not managed to get into any of those new sites since Oink went down, which has been quite a while. What good are all these sites if you can't get at them?

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[morari]

Because iTunes is bloated junk.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

You buy music from big distributors instead of paying the artist directly?

For shame, good sir, for shame.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

"if there is a song on an album that I need"

What do you *need* it for, may I ask?

Or is it "want" instead of "need"?

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[mcclungsr]

I buy music on Amazon, and once iTunes offered DRM-free tracks that became an option as well (since I mostly listen on linux boxes). I don't think of this as a moral issue, it's a convenience. The bitrates are good, and less work even than torrents. For $1/song, the money really doesn't seem like a big issue. I still buy CDs that I rip myself from time to time, but more and more I'm just using the online stores.

I call it being practical.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Kjella]

Spotify is funny, it's pretty much the stop gap to prevent copyright reform in Sweden. If Spotify was available world wide it'd be a huge hit, if it wasn't anywhere the Pirate Party would be in parliament changging the law. But instead you keep the Swedes happy enough (bread and circus anyone?) while still making a ton of monay off the other markets. If there was ever proof that piracy will get yyou a better deal, Spotify is it.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[h00manist]

Yeah, like the music industry can afford expensive lawyers after losing trillions of dollars per day to teh pirates. Those lawyers will have been on less than minimum wage.

yeah i"m sure they are applying for a job flipping burgers right now so they can at least get minimum

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

seriously? +1 interesting?

well, that makes sense given the standard slashdot groupthink of "durrrr evil corporations! conspiracies!"

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of non-tech people who don't understand he difference between Bit Torrent let alone what Bit Torrent even is.

I'm a tech person and I know what Bittorrent is, but I don't "understand he difference between Bit Torrent". Even after correcting the typo, that just doesn't parse.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[LBt1st]

Older P2P networks such as LimeWire allow you to find things that would otherwise not be seeded on BT. BT's fantastic for speed but unless you want something that the majority of others also want/have, your SOL.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[RobertM1968]

For MP3s, it's actually perfectly fine. I've never gotten anything troublesome from LimeWire.

While your luck (either actually due to luck, or because you are technologically savvy) has held out, many of my tech customers' luck has not. I recently (within the last 2 months) had a customer's machine in the where about 5% of their (Limewired) music was infected. A large portion of their jpegs were infected as well.

Now, while 5% isn't a large percentage, in her case, it was a large number (about 100 viruses/spyware/trojans) - and of course, if you get the "wrong" one, it only takes one to truly hose a Windows machine. I suspect the percentage would have been higher if it werent for the fact that a large portion of her music library was actually legally obtained via iTunes.

Though I never asked her, it does bring up an interesting question: Is she one of those "try before you buy" sorts who downloads off Limewire and then buys it on iTunes if she likes it?

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera web browsers treats torrents like they are any other file (sort of a wrapper you could say). You click a torrent and it downloads the .mp3 just as if you had clicked to download a .zip or something.

You can also use portable opera if from USB drive and so you don't need to fully install it. Great for torrents on the go anywhere.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

I am betting those aren't the only viruses that little whore has.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Endo13]

Or maybe it means he's listening to the right kind of music. Just sayin'...

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Endo13]

Or you could rename it Frostwire. Oh, wait...

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[adona1]

iTunes on Windows is pretty badly coded, I know enough people who've had it either attempt to take over their media or in one extreme case, deleted the DVD-ROM drivers (don't ask, I have no idea how). Therefore as they require the program to access the store, it's 0-2 as far as access to decent mp3 stores goes.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Shakrai]

You should use a proxy

FTFY

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Yaotzin]

There is no such thing as overkill. Torrents give you the whole album and so potentially increase the chance of finding another song of the same artist that you might like. Even so, I've stopped downloading music thanks to free (unless you count the ads) services such as Spotify. It's a time saver and it makes you feel slightly better about yourself. The downside of these kinds of services is that a lot of music is not available, which calls for illegal downloading of music, and it's actually gotten worse, but it's slowly getting better again.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Lucky75]

The one thing about shutting down Limewire is that it took a lot of the brunt of the filesharing focus. Now that it's likely gone, they'll turn their attention to bittorrent sites. I would prefer it if limewire stuck around, not that anyone should actually use it.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[JackieBrown]

Why was this modded down?

pipatron acted like what.cd was a viable alternative to limewire and google so this post was a reasonable request.

I don't listen to any music that is not playing on a movie or tv show (and only then while it I am watching the movie or tv show - I won't seek out the song/music) but I know that what.cd is impossible to get in-to and a terrible example to use as an alternative.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[i_liek_turtles]

With DHT, torrents don't have to be centralized

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

You said it. "Cruddy program". Guess what? The network's name is not "LimeWire network". LimeWire was just one of the first Gnutella clients. The name of the network is Gnutella.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[kdemetter]

From other clients that use the gnutella network ?

Really , limewire just uses the gnutella network . It's like banning edonkey2000 , which uses the edonkey network.
  Unless they ban the entire network , but that's not likely to happen , as it's a decentralized network.

So , in other words , it sucks for limewire , but someone else will take over when they fall.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[darthdavid]

You don't know what you're missing. There are so many songs that just work better in context, both thematically and musically, and so many good concept albums out there that you're totally missing out on...

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[darthdavid]

Because he was asking for info on getting into a warez site in a public space so he's either a moron or an RIAA trap. Also, how in hell do you get through life without music? I know that not everyone listens to music more or less constantly like I do (some people get distracted and can't get work done and a lot of people can't sleep with music going) but god, life without music sounds so dull...

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[darthdavid]

He was pretty fucking tiny for a 'giant'... ;)

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

There is actually quite a lot of more obscure content that could be found more easily on limewire than on bittorrent. No one leaves 5000 torrents open, but someone with a library indexed by limewire could easily be sharing that 5000 torrents worth of obscure data.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[hairyfeet]

Not to mention all us PC repairmen that have made millions of dollars cleaning Limewire crap from folks PCs. The RIAA is a bunch of socialists and costing us jobs!

Of course the nice thing about decentralized P2P is that you can't really kill it, especially with there being FOSS implementations, so I'm sure we PC repairmen will still get plenty of work from the next Limewire style Gnutella app that becomes popular. God bless you FOSSies, and thanks for helping spread those viruses! Keep up the good work! Oh and if you could kind of increase the infection rate? My GF has a Bday coming up, kthnxbai.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

The primary problem of Bittorrent and the reason it's a bad replacement, is that it relies on people finding the .torrent-file on Google. In other words, it has a single point of failure and it actually requires users to actively upload the torrent file somewhere. That also means that despite the fact that the Gnutella network is spam-laden, it's still much more useful since you can find much more stuff on there, and the search interface is orders of magnitude better than Google's for finding songs, so you'll find what you want faster. Besides, most of the spam is so stupid that I think it could be filtered out by the client and their hosts put on the ignore list if only the developers would care to. Maybe an easy way to share ignore lists would be useful too.
So, with Limewire gone, how do we get our fix? 1) Buy the songs. This is risky since it can infect your machine with all kinds of horrible trojans and rootkits. 2) Frostwire is a Limewire clone, so yeah. 3) Cabos is a Limewire clone with a much improved and more responsive interface and lower memory requirements. 4) Phex is a Limewire clone. Don't like the interface myself, but I gather it has some extra features, so check it out. 5) There are other networks, like the WinMX / Winny / Share family, although those are closed source.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

I always wondered why everyone uses a centralised system like bittorrent to illegally download other peoples hard work

First, the bit about "hard work" is pretty relative, and varies widely by "artist". Nothing by Britney Spears counts as "hard work" under any definition of the phrase, for example. Not that it matters, I only point it out because you seem to think it's relevant (it's not).

Second, most people assume that when they paid for a Limewire membership they were in the clear, legally speaking. Just like when you walk into a brick-and-mortar store & buy a CD you're not expecting to get tackled, arrested, and charged with possession of counterfeit materials.

Third, most people on Limewire don't have a clue about their computers. They don't realize it's set to auto-load and auto-share when you turn your computer on, for example, or that it remains active when you close it. I've helped several friends clean it off their systems- one girl hadn't used it in over a year yet it was still active, and faithfully logged in every day & began sharing the entire contents of her hard drive.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[spire3661]

If you are worried about your IP being known, then you are doing something VERY wrong. This is like being worried that telemarketers found your phone number in the White Pages.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[spire3661]

Why do people store Pr0n? I will never in my life understand the need for 100 GB of personal porn. There is so much out there for free, why bother storing anything but very choice examples?

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[spire3661]

Itunes on windows sucks, thats why. I dont need a massive, bloated piece of software to listen to music. Winamp 2.x was the pinnacle of software MP3 players IMHO.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[spire3661]

Files are zipped as a container for all the files. There are also transmission advantages to having a large single contiguous file versus many many small files. Zipping a bunch of files isnt always about making them smaller.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[HopefulIntern]

Up until recently, with the emergence of youtube-style porn streaming sites, we had to download out porn. This often meant trying to guess what you would be in the mood to see in the afternoon, and starting the download in the morning. Unless the finished download was really bad, you would store it for later reviewing. Lots of people therefore have stashes of porn from years ago.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Xelios]

The lawyers are celebrating another full pocket book, as they're the only ones in this whole equation who actually "won" anything.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[spire3661]

I have an aversion to storing it simply because then I need to make sure its sequestered at all times from the rest of the media files i have. There are A LOT of programs that excel at finding every little piece of media on your machine. Cant even zip stuff to do a simple hide, have to rar it or better just so that the OS cant trivially open it.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

LimeWire constitutes over 90% of the Gnutella network. If 90% of the peers disappear, so does 90% of the content - which will cause the remaining users to start leaving.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[gravis777]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limewire

I mean, I don't think I ever used the Limewire client. I jumped on Frostwire to download an MP3 of a song I had purchased in iTunes because the quality was higher and I was using it in a video I was making for private use. So Limewire is gone? People will flock to Sharaza or Frostwire or some other Gnutella (as was stated).

Most Gnutella clients also have pretty good porn filtering software.

What will be lost? Teenagers who don't know how to configure their options that are sharing all their personal photos with the world, and don't even know it.

I mean, seriously, you shut down a client used to connect to an open network? That's like shutting out Internet Explorer because there is copyrighted content on The Web.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Nursie]

They let you in the UK now too.

So it's useful that I have a proxy over there and a uk credit card :)

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Ginger Unicorn]

I just listened to the first 3 rainbow albums in his honour. i was so looking forward to seeing Heaven & Hell at high voltage in july.... bummer.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

Is she hot? If so, I got a couple of viruses stored away on a floppy.

3 1/2 or 5 1/4? 5 1/4 are harder to come by but are definitely worth the extra effort in finding.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[nomadic]

Ehh, I really don't think it's bad. I don't use it because I don't like the interface, but when I did use it I never had any of these issues with it.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[phorm]

5. "underage porn sex girl with horse and dog"

Even if you WERE looking for filthy, illegal porn you'd have to be an idiot to download that. But man, there are a lot of files with names like that.

They're just trying to hide their music from the RIAA. It's probably easier to fight a KP accusation than the trial-by-money in RIAA court these days.

They'd be in *real* trouble if that file ended in Mp3, as it would likely infringe on the work of a half dozen rappers.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Tak_1]

You have to know to turn off the "helpful" setting s like "Keep Media Folders organized" and "Copy files to iTunes media folder" then its safe enough. It always amazes me someone will turn a program like that loose on their music collection without having a backup, or at least checking the SETTINGS first. No matter WHO makes it. I don't blame Windows users for hating iTunes, its not a fun experience on a Winbox. Its fine on an actual Mac, but on Windows its no fun at all, "Though what is?" When I used to use Windows I used Anapod Explorer from Red Chair software instead. It was cheap enough and gave that "drag and drop" experience the Windows crowd claims to want so bad.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[cffrost]

[...] don't understand he difference between Bit Torrent let alone [...]

The difference between BitTorrent and what? If you're referring to the difference between BitTorrent and BitTorrent, the difference is negligible at best.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[cffrost]

[...] I forgot I shouldn't admit I actually feel a moral obligation to actually pay for the music I buy [...]

Why so hard on yourself? I'm grateful that you pay for the music you buy. If it weren't for better and righteous people like you, there would be nothing left to share... So I've been told.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Landreville]

Even if I want a single song by a band, hard drives and bandwidth are so cheap that I just download the entire discography through bittorrent anyway

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[MMInterface]

You don't use a torrent to grab a three or four meg file: swarming protocols work best for sharing large files.

You don't or you shouldn't? With torrents people generally look for the album many of which are small enough that they aren't even compressed. From there they can download a single track listed in the torrent (bad for the sworm) or just download the whole album and delete the songs they don't want. If the album is well seeded, the benefit of a higher downloads speed and selection is often worth dealing with torrents, even for small files. Then you have the private trackers like jpopsuki that seed singles and package files so you can download them individually.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[ScrewMaster]

It was basically made illegal because the content industry told our politicians that we'd be transformed into a Internet equivalent of a third world country otherwise.

Well, like most countries that are going down that road (like mine, the U.S.) what's actually going to happen is that we'll all become cultural backwaters. Anything that was good will be locked away, and anyone that tries to create anything new will be sued into oblivion.

The tragedy of all this is the number of perhaps well-meaning lawmakers who buy into content industry lies. There are also those who know exactly what is going on, know the damage they're causing, but do it anyway because they get paid for it. The entire industry is sick and really needs to be reined in on an international level, before they cause any more grief.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[philofaqs]

I've seen this 3 times especially with 4-5 year old drives, Apple sometimes really doesn't know how to program for windows. It's relatively trivial to fix when you realise what's happened. Limewire and bearshare appear on almost every machine I've been asked to look at and have been so badly infected that most times it's a rebuild and the data is well sh1t filled....

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[JackieBrown]

Also, how in hell do you get through life without music?

I wish I did listen to music but I have no taste and prefer the quiet.

This is a social handicap. I really miss out on a lot of conversations since I do not listen to music nor do I watch sports.

Unfortunately, where I live - and I imagine most places, - there are not many other things to talk about with people. You can only get by on the weather so long. And where I work, most people do not read nor camp which kills my two main passions.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[kdemetter]

No , those peer will simply download another client.
And trust me , there are a lot of different clients on the gnuttela network.

For instance Bearshare , etc ...

The fact is , some years ago , Frostwire ( a spin off of Limewire ) was created for this reason ( they felt the heat coming ).

Alternative Limewire network coming online...

[Aranykai]

...in 3, 2, 1

Re:Alternative Limewire network coming online...

[Anonymous Coward]

Its the gnutella network.

There are already a half-a-dozen alternative clients.

Its like the legal profession is completely naive of how software on the Internet works.

Re:Alternative Limewire network coming online...

[ScrewMaster]

...in 3, 2, 1

Limewire was nothing special: just a Gnutella client with extensions. The Gnutella "network" is alive and well, has been for years, and there are many clients out there for it. Limewire just suckered a lot of people into paying for software that was readily available for free. I don't care that Limewire is getting nailed, I just don't like the media companies winning cases like this. It's bad for everybody, including them, if they just had the wit to see it.

Re:Alternative Limewire network coming online...

[Anonymous Coward]

Its like the legal profession is completely naive of how software on the Internet works.

Or they know exactly how it works and the lawyers like making gobs of cash playing whack-a-mole?

Re:Alternative Limewire network coming online...

[HungryHobo]

As long as they get paid why should they care?
The fact that other networks will take over in the blink of an eye just means another paycheck years down the line.

Re:Alternative Limewire network coming online...

[westlake]

Its like the legal profession is completely naive of how software on the Internet works.

The judge based her decision on how LimeWire conducted its business.

How the LimeWire client was designed to facilitate that business was part of what she looked at - but by no means the whole.

The geek sees everything in isolation. He never connects the dots.

Until it is too late.

Re:Alternative Limewire network coming online...

[blueg3]

You can't sue the Gnutella network, but you can sue the people who made LimeWire, which is by far the most popular Gnutella client.

The lawyers may not understand the distinction between Gnutella and LimeWire, but I guarantee you someone on their side hired someone else to explain it.

You can't shut down Gnutella effectively, and I'm sure they know this. They can, however, shut down the most popular client and make people think twice about writing a Gnutella client or using the Gnutella network.

Re:Alternative Limewire network coming online...

[stumblingblock]

Of course. The lawyers don't want to change the paradigm so that lawsuits would be unnecessary, their goal is just one specific target at a time, with many future targets assured.

Re:Alternative Limewire network coming online...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not as naive as it seems, granted, this IS whack-a-mole, but, little victories like this for their side add up and set precedents. They've already made it quite clear that net neutrality is something they regard as unacceptable, this kind of thing further defines boundaries on what THEY consider acceptable behavior. Think about it, allowing the media companies/ ISP's to define what kind of traffic can pass unfettered by throttling and DRM, and now they have one more nail to add that can be used to preemptively prosecute "those dastardly pirates". Doesn't help when the burden of proof falls on the alleged infringer to prove their degree of guilt, whatever it happens to be.

Worse still, that the penalties FAR outstrip the focus of the offense, and bring ruinous financial death sentences upon those unlucky enough not to be able to defend themselves. Not to say there isn't a legitimate gripe on their part, but the degree of overkill is beyond stultifying, and runs the risk of creating through financial means, the equivalent of slavery. Think it doesn't? Try neglecting to pay the court judgement if found guilty, and see just how long it takes to get locked up for contempt of court, where, as I understand it, in some places you can be held INDEFINITELY until the court releases you.

All of this, really, is to create an underclass beholden to corporate policies from cradle to grave. I suppose the next thing they might try is to condemn "willfull infringers" to entertaining the public on mass media as a means of "recovering lost profits", maybe something involving a colloseum and a pride of lions, or something similar. Think of the ratings that'd earn! And since they ARE criminals, any nasty talk about "rights" would be muted, especially if the penalty could be made "optional" by offering a "contract" to these people which would reduce their "debt" to the media companies.

Sheez, as if healthcare in this country wasn't close enough to this concept already.....

Re:Alternative Limewire network coming online...

[Aranykai]

Its like what I started doing when I was a teenager. My summer job was mowing lawns, so I started offering a bonus service to fertilize it in the spring for a small amount. Just about everyone that took that service switched from 10 day mowing to weekly mowing cause the grass grew faster.

I made a good chunk of change that year.

Re:Alternative Limewire network coming online...

[Tim C]

Or perhaps they don't view the fact that what they're trying to do is ultimately futile as a reason to simply ignore that the law is being broken on a huge scale?

You can argue that Society is essentially saying "we do not like this law any more", but that's not the job of the lawyers to do anything about, that's for your government to address.

60 percent? Really?

[dexterr]

As the title says; 60 percent!? Really? Except for my girlfriend (wich by the way stopped using it when she met me because I recommended better protocols) I don't know anyone who's using it or have been using it.

Re:60 percent? Really?

[HungryHobo]

I think it's that 60% still have it installed or something.
I know one or 2 who use it but it's an unmitigated crapfest which I wouldn't touch with a barge poll.

Re:60 percent? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

this may have been true when the law suit started

Re:60 percent? Really?

[fewnorms]

Lies! Just admit it, it was your little brother slurping up all the bandwidth. Right?
Slashdot posters with a girlfriend, there ain't no such thing!

Re:60 percent? Really?

[dexterr]

Damn! You got me this time.

Re:60 percent? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

...Except for my girlfriend (wich by the way stopped using it when she met me...

Who.

She may be a witch - I don't know - but your girlfriend is definitely a "who."

Re:60 percent? Really?

[iammani]

Actually must have been his elder sister, Dee Dee. Right Dexterr?

Re:60 percent? Really?

[dexterr]

I give you that one. "which" sounded good my head (Hey! Let's not be too pro-feminism and stuff!). A typo gives you bonus points.

Re:60 percent? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless she's a blow up / real doll. Let's face it, this is slashdot afterall.

Re:60 percent? Really?

[Threni]

I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty sure you know something like 0.000000000000001% of the internet using public! Oh, and your girlfriend is experimenting with other protocols when you're not around.

Re:60 percent? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

...Except for my girlfriend (wich by the way stopped using it when she met me...

Who.

She may be a witch - I don't know - but your girlfriend is definitely a "who."

Baaa! Baaa!

Re:60 percent? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

:(

I just finished my mod points too

Re:60 percent? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

And apparently posting as AC is still counted as "posting and moderating" the same discussion. Oh well =/

Re:60 percent? Really?

[pastyM]

Same here, my girlfriend swore by it until I opened her eyes to Bit Torrent.

Re:60 percent? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to log out, first.

I switched to legal downloads

[Anonymous Coward]

I stopped using Limewire years ago after downloading a few nasty viruses and hundreds of low quality and incomplete music. Free music was no longer worth my trouble. I switched to iTunes and legal music purchases and have never looked back.

Re:I switched to legal downloads

[Darkness404]

Yeah, Limewire is generally crap because so many songs are incorrectly attributed, wrong titles, etc.

The problem with iTunes and the like is it is impossible to get many artists, other times you can find early or later works by a band but can't find the ones you want, or in extreme cases iTunes wants you to pay $10+ for the album when you really want one song.

Music distributors finally got their heads out of their rears recently and eliminated DRM for the most part, but there is still a lot of things they are doing wrong.

Re:I switched to legal downloads

[AK Marc]

My wife is the same. She goes to iTunes first if she wants one and only one song. But when they don't sell the song individually, then she puts in a request that I find it via "alternative" methods. If every song made was available for $0.50 with a good client, guaranteed results and all that, there would be very little song piracy. It's worth the cost for good searches, correct metadata, and re-download capability and such you get from a real store. Oh, and no DRM so that it just works however they want to play it. If they did that, they'd wipe out piracy. Instead, we have them trying to bundle more into albums only and increase the costs of the individual songs and are still pressing for DRM. But that's what you get with a monopoly. An irrational lunge towards the bottom line, rather than trying to make the customers happy (which will still make them more than enough money to show a healthy profit).

Re:I switched to legal downloads

[Anonymous Coward]

So, bowing is easier than fighting? What are you going to so when they tell you it's time to fight for them?

Re:I switched to legal downloads

[Anonymous Coward]

I use: AmazonMP3 and now, UbuntuOne as well for legal downloads.. though it has a considerably smaller library (but not bad for just starting)
For stuff that isn't in maintstream distribution (because some asshole thinks that no one should listen to music that he doesn't see fit) then it's off to the evil pirates I go. arrr

Re:I switched to legal downloads

[Anonymous Coward]

I stopped buying music years ago after encountering some nasty DRM schemes. Bought music was no longer worth my trouble. I switched to BT and flac, and have never looked back.

Re:I switched to legal downloads

[SvnLyrBrto]

> If every song made was available for $0.50 with a good client,
> guaranteed results and all that, there would be very little song piracy.

Even the full $1 that iTunes charges would be perfectly fine... if it was split only between Apple (for providing the service) and the artist (for producing the work). Over the last ten years or so the RIAA/metallica have shown beyond all doubt that they are contemptible, loathsome, and evil beyond redemption. I want to see them ruined.

Re:I switched to legal downloads

[svick]

If every song made was available for $0.50 with a good client, guaranteed results and all that, there would be very little song piracy.

That, and if it was available everywhere, not just in the US.

Re:I switched to legal downloads

[TriezGamer]

>>[M]etallica [has] shown beyond all doubt that they are contemptible, loathsome, and evil beyond redemption.

I never thought I would see the day that my mother agrees with something on Slashdot. You're about a decade behind her, but some day you'll catch up.

Re:I switched to legal downloads

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about the GP. But until Metallica shilled for Hillary Rosen and crew; I was aware of their existence, but that was about all. They could have been good or evil or chaotic or lawful for all I knew. But before Napster, they were completely off my radar.

Now, I agree with both of you: irredeemably evil.

FrostWire

[Meneth]

It's not like the Gnutella network will shut down. Even if LimeWire stops distributing its client, there are plenty of others. For example, FrostWire.

Re:FrostWire

[sznupi]

Heck, for all practical purposes, FrostWire is Limewire...just a fork done a bit more right.

Re:FrostWire

[Anonymous Coward]

I just wonder how FrostWire will survive without LimeWire when FrostWire IS LimeWire without well- the logo and a few bits of code restricting throughput.

Re:FrostWire

[Snarf You]

I prefer LemonWire myself. Although PlumWire has some nice features, and CherryWire isn't too bad either.

But whatever you do, stay away from KumquatWire!

Re:FrostWire

[ducomputergeek]

What is more interesting in this case is the fact that they are going after CEO for damages. If that is upheld, then the RIAA could, in theory, go after any body working on such clients. Anyone who had contributed code to the frostwire project would end up being liable for what the users of Frostwire download with it.

Shut down soon?

[mirix]

I thought it fizzled out years ago. I had no idea it still exists.

It's Taken The This Long?

[segedunum]

Limewire has been around for years and they've only now just got around to trying to close the thing down?

Re:It's Taken The This Long?

[Endo13]

I think this case was merely a token battle on the part of the RIAA. They have to know by now that they're never going to get rid of P2P sharing by going after the software developers, but at the same time they have to make it look like they're still trying.

Re:It's Taken The This Long?

[xOneca]

And they call unfair competition to P2P...

Limewire down? Oh, my!

[Alien1024]

Next thing they will be turning down is WinMX. With audiogalaxy gone, things look all gloom and doom for P2P music downloads.

Re:Limewire down? Oh, my!

[DJ Particle]

That's right...they tried to kill WinMX, then someone else grabbed it, put new WinMX servers up, and it's still alive. ;)

Corporate Veil

[phantomcircuit]

Yeah but will they be able to pierce the corporate veil and hold the CEO personally accountable? Otherwise his company becomes worthless and he keeps all the money that he's been paid in salary.

stop the press

[Anonymous Coward]

there will come the day, where the technology will allow
so much bandwidth, that all song in existence will be
broad casted at the same time, either thru light, or electrons (maybe even neutrinos).
you just have to hit the right channel to get it for free.

Willing to bet that 60% figure is bunk

[Khyber]

Considering FrostWire exists, I'll bet the actual limewire usage is nowhere near what is projected there. Frostwire = Limewire Pro for free. This is what happens when you open-source your stuff! :)

Re:Willing to bet that 60% figure is bunk

[phantomcircuit]

Actually that sounds about right. Seriously search gnutella, most of the peers are limewire.

Re:Willing to bet that 60% figure is bunk

[Lehk228]

i think frostwire identifies as limewire

Re:Willing to bet that 60% figure is bunk

[Khyber]

Frostwire identifies as LimeWire Pro. It's one single freaking flag that needed to be changed in source.

Why stop there?

[cifey]

committed copyright infringement, induced copyright infringement, and engaged in unfair competition

Also the isps and operating system vendors will be sued out of business. Additionally Tim Lee, Von Newman and Alan Turing are being held on 10bln dollars bail.

Re:Why stop there?

[Bieeanda]

Pfft. I hear von Neumann's got a machine that'll make a lawsuit the least of their worries.

Time for Mule

[Murdoch5]

Limewire had a good run, I'll openly admit I've used it a ton but it's actually not that good a p2p client. When I can I like to use mule and it 100% of the time returns better results. I think it might be time for the mule to rise!!

Re:Time for Mule

[JeanBaptiste]

yeah 2000 was a pretty good year

60%?

[Arancaytar]

That number seems either misleading or bullshit. Earlier reports were saying that the vast majority of peer-to-peer filesharing goes through BitTorrent, and now a different network is supposed to have more than half of the traffic?

Perhaps they mean 60% of the non-torrent traffic?

Re:60%?

[Beelzebud]

No they simply pull these numbers out of their asses to justify their crusade.

Re:60%?

[Larryish]

Perhaps they meant 60% of total p2p client instances.

Most of my relatives have no idea what bittorrent is, and they are totally ordinary Fox News and American Idol types. Most of them use LimeWire.

Fortunately they live in states other than this one, which cuts down on the amount of ZOMG I HAVE A VIRUS!!!1 tech support calls.

Re:60%?

[blueg3]

One figure is what fraction of users use this particular client (LimeWire). The other figure is what fraction of bandwidth a particular protocol takes up, They're completely different measures.

Cool

[deathtopaulw]

Had no idea that %60 of the internet was completely retarded. The rest of us with actual musical taste and a library to share will sit unnoticed on soulseek for the rest of eternity. I guess bittorrent is too complicated for someone who just wants a single dosage of Black Eyed Peas puke.

Re:Cool

[Voyager529]

Actually, Soulseek could have landed itself on the radar in slightly different circumstances. I remember the pre-firmware 2.0 days of the iPhone when the ONLY way to get native applications was by jailbreaking and running installer.app. One of the available applications: Soulseek. Back in those days, the iPhone even left the on board music library more-or-less accessible, so Soulseek was able to download MP3's, add them to your iPod library, and share them when you left the client resident. I don't know how many people actually installed it, but access to the iTunes library was hampered to the point that, to my knowledge, there was never a release of the app to any successive revision of the firmware. While I haven't checked recently, the last P2P app I am aware of that's still available for the iPhone is cTorrent, which for me was a guaranteed way to make sure that I didn't have any battery life in two hours and was a very effective means of keeping my hands nice and warm in the winter. While I don't think Apple is too concerned with an app that requires one to type commands on a command line and navigate the file structure after downloading a Safari download plugin in order to download files that most likely wouldn't play on the phone, something as simple to use as Soulseek was definitely a threat to the iTMS. Add to that AT&T screaming bloody murder about all the P2P traffic happening on their network if Soulseek was released on subsequent firmware revisions, and you've got a case that most def would have incurred the wrath of Steve had it been available much longer.

Re:Cool

[spiralx]

Indeed, Soulseek is the only place to go to find music, and good enough that I send them a donation every so often.

Excellent

[RichardJenkins]

The sooner we get these people off Limewire and onto Bittorrent, the sooner I can stop having to clean trojans off my friends PCs every few weeks.

Re:Excellent

[moreati]

No sarcasm, or piss taking, I really am curious. Why does switching to Bittorrent mean fewer trojans/infections?

Re:Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

Because viruses can't hopscotch across the protocol if information is being pulled from multiple sources. That is, a tracking file takes a 10th of a file from person A, which may be a virus, but it doesn't matter because 90% of it doesn't exist in the rest of the file.

As opposed to a person on Limewire downloading a full music file that is hooked and infected by a virus.

Re:Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

That is, a tracking file takes a 10th of a file from person A, which may be a virus, but it doesn't matter because 90% of it doesn't exist in the rest of the file.

Well, that and the virus-infected piece would have the wrong hash and your client would reject it. Unless the originally-uploaded version was infected, in which case your client would reject any pieces that don't have the virusy goodness.

Re:Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

Charge money, you'll learn to love cleaning off viruses.

Re:Excellent

[girlintraining]

The sooner we get these people off Limewire and onto Bittorrent, the sooner I can stop having to clean trojans off my friends PCs every few weeks.

The sooner they migrate to BT, the sooner the trojans follow.

Good

[devent]

That's a good thing. I wish they could stop all illegal downloads of music, videos and software. When people finally can't download any free content from the mafia (i.e. content industry) the people will finally see how expensive and restricted the legal alternative is and turn to free and independent sources.

Imagen, if you can't download Windows, Photoshop or MS Office anymore. Maybe than people will see and embrace the free alternatives which are more than sufficient for at least 99% of the users. The same with music, that people can discover that there are plenty of independent music bands with music good as on MTV. And there is plenty of DRM free games, a few free to download, like the http://mashable.com/2009/10/20/world-of-goo-huge-success/

Re:Good

[Shados]

This. seriously.

Its true with most things: When people dodge the law, wether directly or by loopholes, there's no incensive to get the law changed, and things stay in an annoying gray area, and thats not good for anyone. Deal with the law, see how much it sucks, THEN there's a chance things will change.

Re:Good

[Wolfling1]

Its a rapidly evolving guerilla war occuring in virtual space. And we know how well the authorities fare in those situations. They are going to have a hard time stamping it out.

IMHO, their best bet is to suspend our constitutional rights in the same way that they have done with speeding and traffic infringements. Permit the authorities to write you a ticket - for which you are presumed guilty, and must prove your innocence. Send them out electronically. Millions in revenue for the government, and a powerful disincentive for the perps.

All they need to do is slide it through the senate very delicately - the same way they did for the traffic laws.

Re:Good

[Animats]

Imagine, if you can't download Windows, Photoshop or MS Office anymore.

The problem is buying a machine without Windows or MS Office, not downloading it.

Photoshop Elements ($79) is enough for most people. Really, the typical teenager in his parent's basement has no need for CYMK separation capability. Most printing plants prefer to do that themselves now; they know their own ink and press capabilities.

Re:Good

[westlake]

magen, if you can't download Windows, Photoshop or MS Office anymore

The OEM system bundle of hardware and OS software has been the gold standard in the consumer market for thirty years.

I can think of almost no one who pays - or needs to pay - retail list for the full version of MS Office. I do know that MS Office skills are marketable locally at any age. The ticket out of a welfare or SSI disability income for some folks.

Photoshop retail boxed sells for the price of a decent telephoto lens from Nikon or Sigma. For the pro it's part of the cost of doing business.

There are perfectly intelligible reasons why the "free" alternatives aren't embraced more often. This is as true in music and video and PC games as it is in PC software generally.

World of Goo isn't everyone's cup up of tea. There is - musical - life beyond the garage band.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Be careful what you wish for. As soon as piracy would be eradicated, then OSS projects will be attacked wholesale for patent violations, regardless of infringement or not. At best, they would be forced to be commercial projects to pay for patent license fees.

Re:Good

[misexistentialist]

All law pretty much exists in a gray area. Obeying bad laws seems rather perverse. You have a better (i.e. very slim) chance of getting the courts to revoke bad laws when you are charged than getting the legislature to do anything. Unfortunately judges are usually half-senile and not that smart to begin with.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and when that point is reached, all your "free and legal" alternatives will then be made illegal and "pir8 toolz" by fiat, and then you can use your PeeCee for growing daisy's in/on as you deserve for posting such stupidity....

Re:Good

[Hal_Porter]

The Judge's name is Kimba.

A Japanese film called Kimba The White Lion was remixed by Disney into "The Lion King".

http://www.kimbawlion.com/rant2.htm

It's ironic that Disney now claims exclusive rights to the remix and claims it is 100% original and that they were not aware of Kimba.

Ok, perhaps somewhat of a tangent.

Re:Good

[L4t3r4lu5]

And when they can't get Elements for free, they'll look at Paint.NET, GIMP (if it's renamed. Good luck getting clueless Christian mom to install that on her laptop) or another alternative. Hell, F-Spot does a lot of the things almost everyone wants to do with an image (resize, crop, red-eye removal).

Hell, there's even a Linux port of Paint.NET! It's called Printa, it's not complete yet, but it is still looking very good.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

World of Goo was not free. It was "pay what you want". And the amount of people who thought that it was worth $0.01 although the game dwarfs most of what is offered on Xbox Live Arcade is sickening.

Re:Good

[Hoover,L Ron]

I think it's a little naive to think that if all illegal downloads were somehow eliminated that people would turn to alternative music/software. For one thing the documentation in FOSS is (for the most part) lacking. There are so many bands vying for attention now that you almost need the pay model to separate the wheat from the chaff (yeah I know there's a lot of chaff in the legit marketplace too but it's higher quality chaff). Nobody has the time nor the inclination to "discover" new music and they tend to go with the flow because their peers are into it.

Shareaza

[enter to exit]

For those of you who have a reason to avoid torrents. Shareaza is an excellent (clean and superior) alternative. ( http://shareaza.sourceforge.net/ ). It supports eDonkey2000, Gnutella, Gnutella2 and handles bitTorrent acceptably. It is free software (GPL).

windows only (kinda works on wine)

UMG v. MP3.com

[tepples]

I don't feel [downloading a copy of an album that I own is] infringing on copyright, since I own the album.

A U.S. court disagreed with you. UMG Recordings, Inc. v. MP3.com, Inc., 92 F. Supp. 2d 349 (S.D.N.Y. 2000).

Re:UMG v. MP3.com

[paeanblack]

There is a crucial difference between how lawyers and engineers view the issue:

To an engineer, the content of a digital file is the primary attribute. Two files with identical contents are indistinguishable and interchangeable.

To a lawyer, the pedigree of a digital file just as important as the content. Two identical files with different histories are different entities.

What this means is that if you and your friend each own a copy of the same album, you may feel it is reasonable to copy data from his disk when convenient, since you legally own a copy with the exact same contents. In the eyes of the law, however, those song files are NOT the same, because they have different histories. The rights you have to your copy do not extend to all other instances of that file, even if they are indistinguishable or not.

It's easy to say that the lawyer view is ridiculous, but (a) that is the view that defines the law, and (b) it seems far less ridiculous after one studies the history of copyright law beginning in the 1500s.

There is a good article on this subject:
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/lawpoli/colour/2004061001.php

Re:UMG v. MP3.com

[Mr. Freeman]

"(a) that is the view that defines the law"
What defines the law is what the population will put up with. If no one will put up with the lawyer's bullshit view then it's unenforceable.

"(b) it seems far less ridiculous after one studies the history of copyright law beginning in the 1500s."

It doesn't seem any less ridiculous, you can just see how something so stupid came from lots of smaller less stupid decisions. Doesn't matter how it got to where it is now, it's still fucking stupid.

Re:UMG v. MP3.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but files stored on a disk have nothing in them that represents "history". The best you can hope to do is tag your file with a watermark, but at the end of the day if faced with two files that are bit-for-bit identical, there is no way that you can say the possession of one is legal and the other is illegal, because there is no way you can prove that there is any difference between the two.

It's easy to say that the lawyer view is ridiculous, but (a) that is the view that defines the law, and (b) it seems far less ridiculous after one studies the history of copyright law beginning in the 1500s.

Very good point, it makes near-perfect sense in that context. The problem is that the context here is different, and the old paradigm simply does not hold. For a start, digital storage allow the creation of truly identical copies, which was not possible in the past, and raises the problem I mentioned earlier.

The UMG v. MP3.com case comes down to that fact that it was a commercial service, which is a whole different kettle of fish.

Re:UMG v. MP3.com

[tepples]

What defines the law is what the population will put up with. If no one will put up with the lawyer's bullshit view then it's unenforceable.

What defines what the population will put up with is what the major publishers, through the news media, tell the population to put up with. For example, every major commercial TV news channel in the United States (CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox, and CNN) shares a parent company with one of the big six movie distributors (Paramount, Disney, Universal, Fox, and Warner).

Re:UMG v. MP3.com

[Doctor_Jest]

Yep. As they often do. Usually the most money makes these things go around. Remember the sham that was DeCSS?

Re:UMG v. MP3.com

[Doctor_Jest]

It took since the 1500s for it to get this stupid. Make no mistake, copyright was never meant to be a property right until recently. I find the concept of copyright as a property right far more asinine than the "pedigree" of something. It defies logic.

Re:UMG v. MP3.com

[optimus2861]

What this means is that if you and your friend each own a copy of the same album, you may feel it is reasonable to copy data from his disk when convenient, since you legally own a copy with the exact same contents. In the eyes of the law, however, those song files are NOT the same, because they have different histories. The rights you have to your copy do not extend to all other instances of that file, even if they are indistinguishable or not.

Interesting you linked to a Canadian article to explain that, because Canada (in a rare moment of government sanity) actually legalized exactly this situation several years ago. Private non-commercial copying is legal so long as you don't distribute the copies. Who knows if it will stay legal with this new POS copyright bill being discussed, mind you..

Re:UMG v. MP3.com

[Anonymous Coward]

The sad thing, this verdict destroyed one of the best indie music sites on the Internet. Now at best, you find a site with a couple 3 year old albums samples, or you deal with Pandora'a 60 second ads every 2 songs in hopes to find something worth listening to. Pandora has more ads than radio stations these days, so it is absolutely worthless. Last.fm is decent, but doesn't really have new bands.

So, with the demise of mp3.com went with easy access to finding new and indie bands.

Re:UMG v. MP3.com

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's easy to say that the lawyer view is ridiculous, but (a) that is the view that defines the law, and (b) it seems far less ridiculous after one studies the history of copyright law beginning in the 1500s."

It fascinates me how some people view "the law" as if it were an attribute of God that must be blindly obeyed upheld and enforced at all costs lest a hole is ripped into the fabric of the universe. If laws are so important then why do they differ and conflict with each other from between municipalities, states or countries?

I don't know why I find signs constantly trying to remind me of what "the law" is so annoying.
"Clean up after your dog - IT'S THE LAW!"
"Do not provide alcohol to minors - IT'S THE LAW!"

I'm however ok with universal laws such as gravity and Ohm's law.

If you can break it then its only real significance must only be to lawyers.

Re:UMG v. MP3.com

[Anonymous Coward]

It's easy to say that the lawyer view is ridiculous, but (a) that is the view that defines the law, and (b) it seems far less ridiculous after one studies the history of copyright law beginning in the 1500s.

Be that as it may, in the modern day, the lawyer's view is still ridiculous.

I recognize that the lawyer's view has the force of law behind it, so failing to share it has some real consequences....however....that does not change the fact that the law is very far behind the times, is the cause of much injustice, and its failure to catch up is very harmful to our society and our economy (and is still objectively ridiculous).

Re:UMG v. MP3.com

[Anonymous Coward]

[...](b) it seems far less ridiculous after one studies the history of copyright law beginning in the 1500s.

Maybe it's time for lawyers to realize it's 2010 and we have digital documents now.

Re:UMG v. MP3.com

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Two identical files with different histories are different entities.

So if I find a Beatles song somewhere in the Champernowne constant, am I free to keep it?

Re:UMG v. MP3.com

[vuffi_raa]

the problem though is that the law has it both ways, it says that the IP is licensed when you purchase a copy of it, yet feels no responsibility to either replace if lost or damaged or allow you to reproduce the purchased license to another piece of media, yet it declares that each physical piece of media is a separate purchase and entity.
when it comes down to it IP holders in general (and I am one, though not one that thinks this way) use whatever argument is best suited for them to make money from, not one that is consistent or in the best interest of artists/filmmakers or the consumer.

Re:UMG v. MP3.com

[Anonymous Coward]

It's true that many people simply don't think...

Women are not to be seen in public with men who are not family - It's the law.
Kill off the native Americans - It's the law.
Japanese Internment - It's the law.
Keine Juden! - It's the law!

Craptastic music

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps if artists were creating music worth paying for the need to download the hollow drivel they now call music would decline.

Typical windows user just had security upgraded...

[Turzyx]

... I mean, is there ever anything genuine shared on there? lady_gaga-poker_face.exe THAT LOOKS GENUINE *click*click*

Google

[whisper_jeff]

And what is Google doing during each of these cases. As the RIAA wages battle against these smaller search engines (because, really, that's what they are) and wins, they are building an ever-increasingly large portfolio of prior case law. Eventually the RIAA are going to decide that enough cases have gone their way that they can wage the real battle - to go after Google (and Bing and Yahoo). I am shocked that Google's legal department is just sitting and watching these cases unfold without offering assistance. Then again, I'm not a lawyer nor a multi-billion dollar corporation so what do I know?...

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Google thinks they are too big to be sued out of existence. However, there is a large trail of precedents being laid (MGM vs. Grokster for example laid down in no uncertain terms by SCOTUS) which will make it trivial to knock out alleged IP infringement very easy to do.

I'm sure that eventually, Google will be sued, and will have to hand over all IPs and other identifying info if someone searches for certain terms soon. It is only a matter of time with treaties like ACTA before searching for "crack" "patch", or "cd key" will end up getting some form of law enforcement knocking on the door looking to seize equipment, just like how it is in the UK where making info on certain subjects can get people in prison for a decade.

Thoughtcrime is coming.

Gnutella Web Cache?

[tepples]

Its the gnutella network.

There are already a half-a-dozen alternative clients.

But do alternative clients provide their own set of Gnutella Web Cache servers? Without one, a client doesn't know of any active nodes accepting connections into the network.

Re:Gnutella Web Cache?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, that is a part of the gnutella specification.

Torrent is not for singles

[tepples]

get these people off Limewire and onto Bittorrent

This comment says pretty much the same thing, but its replies point out that Gnutella protocol is better than torrents for files under 10 MB, such as single songs.

Great..

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I have to teach my dad a whole new software to download his music

Why

[Anonymous Coward]

Sites like grooveshark.com are all over why does anyone need to download their music they can listen to it for free on grooveshark

Re:Why

[BLKMGK]

Damn thanks for that - nice site! Lots of Lobsterdust on the first search - awesome!

They can and they have

[westlake]

From Reuters:

First, the judge found Gorton, who is also LimeWire's sole director, personally liable for infringement, observing in her ruling that "an individual, including a corporate officer, who has the ability to supervise infringing activity and has a financial interest in that activity, or who personally participates in that activity is personally liable for infringement."

That will likely strike fear in the hearts of would-be P2P moguls who may have been clinging to the belief that they could hide behind corporate shells, insulating their own assets if the law ever caught up with them.

Ruling could have chilling effect on P2P services

Re:They can and they have

[Anonymous Coward]

The real question is, when will this standard of justice be applied to financial firms? There are a number of investment bank CEOs who are really itching for a new set of silver bracelets...

Re:They can and they have

[RobertM1968]

From Reuters:

First, the judge found Gorton, who is also LimeWire's sole director, personally liable for infringement, observing in her ruling that "an individual, including a corporate officer, who has the ability to supervise infringing activity and has a financial interest in that activity, or who personally participates in that activity is personally liable for infringement."

That will likely strike fear in the hearts of would-be P2P moguls who may have been clinging to the belief that they could hide behind corporate shells, insulating their own assets if the law ever caught up with them.

Ruling could have chilling effect on P2P services

The one good thing that may come of this is that if it is upheld, perhaps it will set some sort of precedence for dealing with other corporate "bigwigs" who violate numerous laws with the expectation of hiding behind the "corporate shield" - betcha more companies would be straightforward with their dealings, prevent riskier actions and be less likely to knowingly break the law.

Regardless, every time I skim the article (dont worry... I didnt actually read the whole thing... I do know this is slashdot I'm on) and see the mention of Gorton, I suddenly want to go buy some fish sticks. Cant figure out why. ;-)

Re:They can and they have

[h00manist]

pr sponsored scare tactics. they stick this stuff into the news, and that's the main strategy - to reduce p2p by fear, intimidation, and technical complications. they know it's not going away completely, but they are going to do their best to make it reduce. they know it's failing, but they have no other alternative.

Re:They can and they have

[ducomputergeek]

I know when we formed our company, (S-Corp) we were required to have 2 or more officers to even get it registered in Illinois. But if you have a C or S Corp then there are a bunch of procedures you have to do, like quarterly board meetings plus an annual BOD meeting, etc..

Re:They can and they have

[Anonymous Coward]

It actually is working. What the RIAA/MPAA/etc. want is everything to go private. Private trackers, private sites, etc. Every time a site goes private, it is a champagne-popping victory for the record labels.

Why? Divide and conquer. If the bar is high enough for someone not to be able to find songs unless they spend time getting to know people in a warez scene, they will pay the $14.00 price for a CD. Of course, the closed sites will then be easy prey, because all it would take is sending in a forensics team + SWAT guys where their servers are.

Re:They can and they have

[Anonymous Coward]

Why isn't this the case for other illegal corporate activities? Like say BP and the gulf fiasco?

gnutella has full blown aids

[steak]

The article notes that LimeWire is used by nearly 60 percent of the people who download songs

it should also be noted that about 95% of infected computers have limewire or some other gnutella client installed. i don't know why but gnutella is just riddled with digital herpes.

Most popular? It's just one client.

[Hurricane78]

What the fuck is he talking about? LimeWire is just one client... just one client... for the Gnutella network.
There are many many others! Hell, take a ready-made gnutella library and build your own one in no time!

Gnutella is not going anywhere, as it, being completely decentral, can’t be killed.
My bet is on TFA being MAFIAA FUD.

320,000 Downloads Of The Client Each Week

[westlake]

As the title says; 60 percent!? Really?

From Download.com.

Total LimeWire client downloads: 206 million.
Total last week: 320,000.

Total uTorrent client downloads: 8 million.
Total last week: 61,000.

P2P & File-Sharing Software

Re:320,000 Downloads Of The Client Each Week

[Anonymous Coward]

why is this marked funny ? I find it pretty sad

Re:320,000 Downloads Of The Client Each Week

[Anonymous Coward]

Limewire is the only Limewire client
Torrent is just one of the lot of BT clients...

Re:320,000 Downloads Of The Client Each Week

[L4t3r4lu5]

Actually, Frostwire is a Limewire clone. Supports the "Turbo" features of Limewire without the paying, and also some extra privacy features I think.

I've not used it for... Wow, well over a year now.

Re:320,000 Downloads Of The Client Each Week

[Anonymous Coward]

Well duh! Of course there are more Limewire downloads.

That's because Limewire users get some nasty trojan or virus and end up having to reformat and reinstall their Windows machine. Once they've done that they have to download and install Limewire again.

Do you see where this is going?

Re:320,000 Downloads Of The Client Each Week

[rdnetto]

All this shows is that Limewire users are more likely to download their client from a third party than utorrent users.

A blast from the past

[Torodung]

God damn, stick a fork in it already. FrostWire perhaps?

LOL, LimeWire.

(Yes it's a Flash file. Here be the YouTube version if that makes ya nervous, ya scurvy dogs.)

--
Toro

Re:A blast from the past

[Anonymous Coward]

And YouTube is Flash too. How nice.

Re:A blast from the past

[Voyager529]

Actually, NOD32 flagged that...

5/16/2010 10:15:20 PM
HTTP filter file
http://cristgaming.com/pirate.swf BAT/ZEP.A virus
connection terminated - quarantined
Threat was detected upon access to web by the application:

Everybody has AIDS!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to download the Team America soundtrack now, on Gnutella, just to see if it's true that "Everybody Has AIDS."

Wonder what will happen?

Good riddance to 'em

[fustakrakich]

I hope that this will be a lesson to all on that little thing called "discretion"...

Try to do your pee2peeing in the alley, not on the damn street corner...

piracy - encouraging it or attracting it?

[Skapare]

Just to what extent is LimeWire really encouraging piracy? I don't use it so I wouldn't know. But from what I've seen, it is NOT encouraging people who are NOT pirates into becoming pirates. Instead, it IS encouraging people who are already pirates to come use their service instead. At this point the argument could go either way. That can be seen as facilitating piracy or at least profiting from it. OTOH, the argument could go that they are attracting pirates into gradually turn them into paying customers, who will eventually pay for content ... e.g. defeating piracy by attrition.

Re:Typical windows user just had security upgraded

[Zorque]

That, or 16_year_old_boobs_50_cent_Doggy_Style_jailbait_World_of_Warcraft_crack.avi.exe.

Shitty!!!! (was Re:Excellent)

[RobertM1968]

The sooner we get these people off Limewire and onto Bittorrent, the sooner I can stop having to clean trojans off my friends PCs every few weeks.

This really sucks... there goes a chunk of the revenue stream in our tech shop... :-(

Those of you who are technologically savvy will probably mod this insightful... those who are not, will probably mod it humorous... those who simply dont like the truth of the post will probably mod it overrated or troll. ;-)

Re:Shitty!!!! (was Re:Excellent)

[Anonymous Coward]

Those of you who are technologically savvy will probably mod this insightful... those who are not, will probably mod it humorous... those who simply dont like the truth of the post will probably mod it overrated or troll. ;-)

-1 Offtopic/don't-tell-me-how-to-mod-you

IN YOUR FACE! ha!

Re:Shitty!!!! (was Re:Excellent)

[RobertM1968]

Those of you who are technologically savvy will probably mod this insightful... those who are not, will probably mod it humorous... those who simply dont like the truth of the post will probably mod it overrated or troll. ;-)

-1 Offtopic/don't-tell-me-how-to-mod-you

IN YOUR FACE! ha!

LoL! Though I forgot "-1 Off topic" you just proved my point! Which is some morons should never be given mod points. Fact is, there is nothing off topic about my post. Many a tech shop (CompUSA where I used to work, the current place I work) find that over 50% of their "repairs" are virus and spyware removal. A very large portion of that are infections obtained via running Limewire. Limewire being shut down will cause that number to at least temporarily drop while those unfamiliar with alternatives have nothing (from their perspective) to use as a replacement. Thus affecting the tech community.

Thanks for playing - you lose!!! :-)

This is rank speculation

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

No offense but this article is rank speculation. You have no information whatsoever about it closing down, just the opinion of some "experts" that it will have to.

Baloney.

More viruses than songs

[flyingfsck]

Good riddance. Limewire caused much pain and suffering to clueless Windows users the world over.

That sucks

[wiredlogic]

Limewire, sucky as it is, is the only Gnutella client with support for Unicode text on Windows. I suppose I'll have to get an IME set up on my Linux server so I can continue to search for Japanese music now.

Re:That sucks

[Alien1024]

WinMX also supports Unicode. Not Gnutella, but from what I read on Wikipedia, still widely used in Japan. Worth a try.

So this effects Gnutella and Frostwire how?

[Anonymous Coward]

Limewire has been forever a horrible client to use. Littered with adware and the sorts. Who cares? Let it die. Frostwire has been a MUCH better choice all along, and Not a victory for the legal bunch. Move along.

Is this illegal?

[AmigaHeretic]

http://www.video2mp3.net/

Works great for me.

Good riddance!

[herojig]

Good riddance! As mentioned many times here, Limewire was just a mess. Vuze is a much better idea/implementation. Wondering if they will be next on the legal chopping block...

Prohibition Part 2: P2P

[bedouin]

A 10+ year fight against something most people use and have no moral objection to -- except a pushy minority with special interests.

History repeats itself. Ban P2P and 'elite' FTPs will reemerge with private memberships. High quality private torrent trackers already exist. Instead of joining a free P2P network you'll pay a guy in China a nominal fee for access to his file distribution network. Remember how much money pirates made in places like Thailand in the 90s just by selling things for a few dollars? All of the shady rackets will return, along with even more viruses since individual files will not be checked by large groups of people, or distributed via reliable release groups.

Ban P2P and watch real crime and extortion take place. Eventually it will be a burden on authorities to chase after 15 year olds who want the new 50 Cent CD; the RIAA won't have money to toss to lawyers either, because their income will remain just as shitty as money goes to shad(ier) sources instead.

For a decade now the biggest sites were targeted and shutdown, yet for some reason it gets easier each year to find what I need on-line. Hmm.

Re:Prohibition Part 2: P2P

[westlake]

Ban P2P and 'elite' FTPs will reemerge with private memberships.

Did you miss the part about Gorton being held personally liable?

First, the judge found Gorton, who is also LimeWire's sole director, personally liable for infringement, observing in her ruling that "an individual, including a corporate officer, who has the ability to supervise infringing activity and has a financial interest in that activity, or who personally participates in that activity is personally liable for infringement."

Did you also forget that copyright infringment and conspiracy to commit copyright infringment can be prosecuted as a felony under US federal law? You membership card is the noose around your neck.

Fooey to the RIAA + some REAL legal insights

[Anonymous Coward]

They are arseholes hanging onto their crappy "flavour of the day" popstar distribution network.

Perhaps everyone of the millions of users should log into the RIAA and their lawyers sites, 10 x a day every day for 6 months - just to stay abreast of the current affairs.

To find out which of the latest backwater losers they are picking on this hour.

Aside from the "Fuck the Man (and Woman)" hysteria, here is a VERY well written article by the lawyers who do prosecute file sharers on behalf of their clients.

It's quite a good read.

www.frankellawyers.com.au/media/article/Unauthorised.pdf

FROSTWIRE

[Terminus32]

...Was the way foward. RIP

60%, really?

[Fross]

"The article notes that LimeWire is used by nearly 60 percent of the people who download songs."

I take it the article was written before the suit was filed then, sometime around 2003?

Good. We can now killfile Eminem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good. We can now killfile Eminem. After all, the recording label is promoting killing cops and pimping ho's. Therefore they're guilty of it.

Gnutella is past, use eMule instead

[Antiocheian]

When I left Gnutella about 7 years ago it wasn't fully decentralized. It required Hubs (or was that Ultrapeers ?). It was also prone to spam and fake attacks because it was forwarding the query itself so that any spammer could tell you that he had the file you asked for. I eventually chose eMule because:

1) It was open source. While the eDonkey client (which eMule was initially based on) was providing better speeds and had a decentralized searchable network (Overnet) it was closed source. My decision proved wise when some years later eDonkey timebombed itself per RIAA's directive. I had a cold dish served by those eDonkey fanboys who were claiming bollocks on the open source argument.

2) It was, and still is, under heavy development. The official client is somewhat stale but modders are working constantly to improve the client. See mods such as Neo, Xtreme, MorphXT and Shark. Mod development comes mainly from Germany, Italy and some from Israel.

3) It developed its own fully decentralized network which is now standard in any installation. In fact I'm not using servers anymore.

All that combined with an anonymous VPN gives me troublefree access to anything I want. The variety of the material is simply amazing. This is far beyond your plain old piratebay copyrighted stuff:

* Old recordings that have gone out of copyright ? Of course
* Fan made movies in their highest quality (without youtube compression) ? You bet
* Service manuals ? Anytime
* I have even found scanned medieval books there that were impossible to find anywhere else on the internet or a public library (apparently some guy has got hold of these somehow and got them public).

The speeds are not great but the overall service is practically bulletproof. It's not by chance eMule has won Sourceforge awards twice in 2006 and 2007.

But the average USA p2p user has always stuck with US-made oldies like WinMX and Gnutella. I've never figured out why.

Re:Gnutella is past, use eMule instead

[Ash Vince]

It required Hubs (or was that Ultrapeers ?)

This still made it a decentralised system. Any normal peer connected to the network could be promoted to an ultrapeer if it had long enough uptime, a decent amount of available bandwidth and fulfilled certain other criteria that I cannot remember. The result of this was that if your client was on 24x7 you could find you were running an ultrapeer without knowing it until you looked at the protocol section of whatever client you were using.

Gnutella was designed to bypass the problems that resulted in Napster being shut down so was built to ensure it could not be taken out by closing down a single server. In many ways it was built on the Internet's strengths.

Obligatory XKCD

[Anonymous Coward]

Obligatory XKCD

About time!

[Jon-ZA]

I am very glad to see this happening. Limewire, in recent years, was the easiest source for non-computer literate people (aka techno-peasants) to get viruses. My know people that would constantly have viruses on their XP machines because of this app. Good riddance, honestly.

LOL, Limewire!

[autophile]

Seriously, is Limewire even relevant anymore?

Re:Prohibition Part 2

[MacWiz]

If someone shares their IP address with you, you can connect directly to their computer. While it may be possible to shut down things like Limewire, you can't really ban P2P without turning off the internet completely.

For a decade now the biggest sites were targeted and shutdown...

Kazaa is still live.

--------

Obviously, the RIAA finds suing people to be more profitable than trying to sell CDs. And they don't have to share any of the money with the artists, which makes them feel all warm and fuzzy.

I don't do P2P, but I use the open Internet (aka a web page) to share my music, so I'm not opposed to it.

Ten years ago, most people didn't know who the RIAA was. Then they sued Napster. The RIAA's greatest obstacle is that they think P2P is ruining sales. I think that reality is that the RIAA ruined sales by being the giant dickwads that they are. I'm sure not going to buy anything from these moronic, gravy-sucking pigs that really believe separating college students from their tuition money is a good thing to do, for any reason.

If they shut down every P2P network that is out there, that won't turn the RIAA into the kind of people I want to do business with. I don't think they can ever get that back. Certainly not from me.

Too bad. I used to love the music business. But it went from being the music business to the music business. Turns out, I just loved the music. They just love the money. It seems as if it would make no difference to the CEOs if they were selling sweat socks. It's all about the quarterly revenue, year-to-year growth, yada, yada.

The industry used to be run by musicians. Now, it's run by people who can't find a musician.

OH NOES

[Eggbloke]

You can only find porn on limewire, unless of course you are looking for porn. The incoming search feature is pretty funny though

I love "haiku anon poster"

[GameboyRMH]

Haiku anon rocks
Off his ass on drugs all day
He makes me laugh

Amazon iTunes

[thetoadwarrior]

Why use iTunes when Amazon is cheap and gives you DRM free MP3s that can be taken anywhere?

What a coincidence. Untaxed music is bad... suckit

[Anonymous Coward]

You know back in the days of early 2001 to 2004 I would put cool file names of incomplete music disguised as raunch Lesbian Strapon porno. For one, I appended the Britney Spears music video "oops I didz it agin" 5 times to make it over 170MB long and then gave it a name like "Awesome Lesbian strapon - Largemarge dominating Petite girl.mpg" and all of a sudden I was the most popular dude on the network; like 200 clients per hour were downloading that. I could only imagine their horror when they opened the file, to see BS singing up the Highschool aisle "oops I didz it agin." I watched some of the clients to see who was smart, and only like 1 of every 10 would stop the download when they first sampled the first 10MBs of the file to figure-out that it was BullShit Brittney Speeeears.