Looks Like the End of the Line For LimeWire 277
tekgoblin writes with news that a federal judge has issued a permanent injunction against LimeWire for copyright infringement and unfair competition. A notice on the LimeWire home page says "THIS IS AN OFFICIAL NOTICE THAT LIMEWIRE IS UNDER A COURT-ORDERED INJUNCTION TO STOP DISTRIBUTING AND SUPPORTING ITS FILE-SHARING SOFTWARE. DOWNLOADING OR SHARING COPYRIGHTED CONTENT WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION IS ILLEGAL." An anonymous reader points to coverage at CNET, too.
Easy fix... (Score:2, Informative)
Rise (Score:2, Informative)
a thousand more to take its place.
Re:They can't distribute the client any more? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Easy fix... (Score:5, Informative)
The base LimeWire client is also open source, released under the GPL.
Well it's a good thing (Score:5, Informative)
Re:They can't distribute the client any more? (Score:5, Informative)
Gnutella (the protocol LimeWire uses) is decentralized, but you have to "bootstrap" the client to find your first few peers. I believe LimeWire LLC operates servers to facilitate this, but it could be done any number of ways. If you had a friend whom you knew was always on LimeWire and had a static IP, you could connect to him. The client could also cache the addresses of nodes that had worked in the past, and try them. I don't know exactly how LimeWire does it, but it seems to me LimeWire's failing is that by insinuating itself between its users and the network (for the purposes of operating a business), it makes itself the single point of failure.
Re:They're still around? (Score:3, Informative)
Do you know the IP address to any good Hotline servers?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotline_Communications
Re:Easy fix... (Score:3, Informative)
Perhaps I've misunderstood, but to be protected as a common carrier, don't you have to have the government classify you as one? I don't think you get to just wake up one day and say "hey, I'm a common carrier, you can't touch me! na na na na na!" once the court/feds/whoever decide they don't like what you're doing
This suggests that there are requirements for being considered a telecom common carrier including reports that have to be filed yearly, etc. - http://www.fcc.gov/wcb/filing.html [fcc.gov]
I know a lot of websites put up statements about not filtering user comments, not being liable for user comments, etc. But has that ever actually been tested in court? The closest I am aware of (and I have not researched this) would be The Pirate Bay and well, that argument hasn't exactly worked well for them. Although they were not prosecuted in the US, I suspect it would have worked no better here in the US or they'd put their servers here.
Re:god damn it (Score:3, Informative)
Re:There are still non-torrent filesharing network (Score:5, Informative)
profits from extremely punitive lawsuits.
Would you believe that they actually [blogspot.com] lose [techdirt.com] money [arstechnica.com] on that shit? Lawyers aren't cheap, especially evil lawyers (even though they make up most of the supply).
Re:Ahh Limewire! That takes me back... (Score:5, Informative)
That is patently false.
Actually correct. Check out Ray Beckerman's blog if you want some more information on that subject. If you're using a Gnutella-style network and you turn off sharing you aren't distributing anything. So far as I've been able to tell, all of the 30,000-odd RIAA lawsuits have been about illegal distribution, not downloading.
Re:Ahh Limewire! That takes me back... (Score:5, Informative)
The advantage of P2P's like Limewire was that it did not share crappy_commercial_music.mp3 while you were downloading crappy_commercial_music.mp3, and as such you could not be fingered for the crime of distributing crappy_commercial_music.mp3 since you were in fact not distributing it.
Uhhh...yeah, and clearly your "logic" with "one-way" downloading of illegal content somehow saved them from a legal injunction...
You're confused. The GP wasn't talking about why Limewire got screwed by the courts, that was an entirely different matter. He is, in fact, talking about the Limewire user base, and there he is correct, at least for those users with a functioning cerebral cortex. The bulk of RIAA lawsuits were for people that stupidly didn't turn off file sharing on their various Gnutella clients (Limewire being only one of many) and "helpful" clients that automatically shared everything they downloaded, thereby making targets out of their users. Downloading isn't where the illegality came it: it was the illegal distribution of copyright materials.
Re:There are still non-torrent filesharing network (Score:1, Informative)
Yes! And they are useful for finding things that aren't on the torrents. http://www.emule-project.net/ is a good decentralised file sharing network.
Re:There are still non-torrent filesharing network (Score:1, Informative)
It's immaculate, fuck-stick. Pretty sure the only reason you think you've never gotten a virus is you're too stupid to know when you've got one.
Re:Easy fix... (Score:3, Informative)
"Otherwise all limewire would have to do is open-source their software and they'd be back in business."
Limewire HAS ALWAYS BEEN open-source.
And because of that (they tried to charge for it like morons,) Frostwire and many other fuller-featured versions came out, that worked better and had the EXACT same interface with a different-colored skin.
Re:Truth and consequences. (Score:5, Informative)
Hi. Let me walk you through turning the fucking file sharing off, since you are apparently TOO NAIVE to have looked through the entire thing in order to understand the workings of the system.
You first install it (ignore the ask toolbar as always, uncheck it and move on)
When it FIRST LOADS UP, it asks you where you want to download, and which folders you want to share - uncheck all the folders under 'shared' box, click them and hit 'remove,' and pick your download location or leave it default, click next.
Tell Limewire your connection type, click next.
A couple more menus in, it will ask you what file types you'd like to share directly with LimeWire itself, uncheck all of those, click next.
Before you've even had the opportunity to download anything, you've been given the options to turn off ALL SHARING.
You are no longer sharing files and will not upload whatever you download.
Was it that hard? You didn't even have to look for a settings menu, THE INNER WORKINGS THAT MATTER THE MOST TO YOU ARE EXPOSED TO YOU BEFORE YOU ARE ALLOWED TO DO ANYTHING.
Don't speak unless you've actually used the program, please. I re-installed it A. for nostalgia and B. to prove you know absolutely nothing of which you speak.
Frostwire (the free 'pro' version of Limewire) has the EXACT SAME PROCEDURE, as does any faithful open-source LimeWire clone using LimeWire's open-source.
Re:There are still non-torrent filesharing network (Score:3, Informative)
Funny thing about torrents. It turns out that usually the main install executable is perfectly fine - it installs a clean copy of whatever program you're pirating. And since most commercial developers even code-sign their setup.exe files, you can even view the digital signatures on the files and verify them.
However, it's the attached keygen or crack that's usually either a trojan or has a malware wrapper around it. I'd say that most keygens and cracks are infected, and your antivirus is actually telling the truth when it says they're infected. It's practically impossible to get a clean keygen/crack, even ye olde crack sites often now unwittingly host them. It's far more profitable this way as it's trivially easy to release a crack and hope someone bundles it together with the software to make it easy.
And even usenet's not immune. I can't remember a day when browsing I don't see thousands of identical posts containing the same virus executable with different names.
Hell, it's even gotten into movies (the movie's 600MB, but it's just a 2 minute video saying "You need to install XXX to play, please visit www.fishysite.com to download").
Explains the rise of the old .nfo file with the required serial number built in - you can't trust cracks and keygens to actually work.
Re:There are still non-torrent filesharing network (Score:3, Informative)
Many versions of Windows have a "disable file extensions for known filetypes" option enabled by default.
That means that:
Super cool video.mpg.exe
Hot naked girls.jpg.exe
Are not obviously executable when viewed in explorer. Typically the icon is changed to match Windows' default, to further the deception.
It's not all the stupid user's fault. Windows is helping, too.