Slashdot Mirror
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.
And nothing of value was lost. Seriously, who uses an inefficient cruddy program like Limewire when you've got bit torrent?
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
...in 3, 2, 1
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
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.
Limewire has been around for years and they've only now just got around to trying to close the thing down?
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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
"(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.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
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.
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?
Ezekiel 23:20