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LimeWire Likely To Shut Down Soon

Posted by kdawson on from the and-then-there-was-one-fewer dept.

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.

3 of 264 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Alternative Limewire network coming online... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  2. Re:And nothing of value was lost by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  3. They can and they have by westlake · · Score: 5, Informative

    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