http://www.comcast.net/articles/music/20101026/MUSIC-US-LIMEWIRE-MUSIC-RULING/

So Limewire has finally been ordered to "Shut Down". However, since Limewire uses a protocol, not a centralized network, this only affects the primary website for Limewire. The network still works, every version of Limewire still works, and every one of the countless other free clients that use the same network protocol still work. So all this order has really done is shut down 1 website. Good Job.

It amazes me how people in power can have these opinions and make these decisions without any idea how the technology even works.

It also amazes that people still use Limewire O_o

Most judges behave like idiots on this kind of cases, but this put it all in perspective.

Same here, I thought it was something from at least five or ten years ago.

It still works qazz, only the website is shutdown. Any version of the program you use should still work, because it's not a server it connects to, it's individuals. The network Limewire uses isn't a place on the internet, it's a way of communicating on the internet. All this court order has done is made it so that one particular program won't be updated any more. The program itself should still work, as do all the other Gnutella clients, inlcuding Limewire's open-source fork, FrostWire. The Gnutella network itself can't be shut down, because it's purely a connection method; you'd have to arrest every person who uses it to communicate, which would be illegal under the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

I am more surprised that it still exists at all anymore.

i finally taught girl person that that is not the way one obtains files on the internet.
i also finally taught her what a rar file is

seriously, i honestly thought it had died out forever ago, and yet the public still has not caught up enough to know what it is...

Filthy pirates. I hope you all get your pants sued off.

In a somewhat more tactful way than Nikky chose to express himself, let me remind you all of the Cemetech Terms of Service regarding piracy. It's not only for the sake of Cemetech; it's pretty stupid for those of you who admit to piracy on a public forum to do so. I deleted a bunch of posts, so please stop wasting my time. It's easier for me to just issue warnings or suspend topics.

While I won't go into any detail as to what I may or may not have used it for(there are plenty of legitimate royalty-free songs from indie bands on that network), I understand that the appeal to Limewire for many is the ability to quickly download individual songs rather than waiting for whole albums like you might get with a torrent.

Also keep in mind that 95% of music downloads are illegal, so a lawsuit against music pirates would be a lawsuit against 95% of the people who download music. That wouldn't be a good move for the industry since these are likely the same people who go to their concerts and buy their merch.

A lot of torrents, for example of Creative Commons albums from Jamendo, are packaged as separate files rather than zipped. A good bittorrent client will allow you to only download certain files from a given torrent, and even prioritize certain files over others.


Most of the bands I have seen in concert advocated pirating their music and only paying for merch/concert tickets.

I'm still surprised no one has attacked Limewire as a distributor of child pornography. If there's any reason to shut a network down, that would be it, though I'd still disagree with it on first amendment grounds.

The difference being that organizations which go after child pornography networks actually want to catch those involved with it and put them in jail. Organizations which go after piracy want to make more money by way of lawsuit.

The Gnutella network is still a useful way to track probable consumers of child pornography and obviously can't be shutdown. Limewire is just another company that can be sued and made an example of for investing copyright-infringement aiding a technologies to discourage others from doing the same (and make an extra buck).

I was unaware you could actually be tracked on limewire, if that's the case, why hasn't the party van come to take me away?

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

More or less, the answer is because you've gotten lucky. If you download illegally and don't take steps to prevent known copyright holders (or their lawfirms/hired tech-guns) from connecting to you, it is only a matter of time until you get a C&D letter at the very least. IANAL, but my understanding of the nature of copyright infringement w.r.t. P2P networks is that what gets you in trouble is not downloading copyrighted content illegally, but rather, distributing it illegally (as is intrinsically a part of most file sharing protocols). This is why with http/ftp and other centralized forms of piracy, the server operators are the ones likely to get in trouble, not the people who download from them. With p2p EVERYONE becomes a distributor, and thus the problem.

With child pornography, uploading OR downloading is likely to get you v& sooner or later, and various articles on /. and the like have discussed how the FBI makes use of honeypots to identify probable downloaders and get a warrant to search their computer.


[edit]

Silly Kerm, why is P2P censored? It makes technically discussions read rather oddly.

I've also heard in various tech news site articles over the years that it's the uploaders that the RIAA and MPAA and their ilk go after, which makes sense if you think about it. It's easier to go after the people distributing the copyrighted works, thus in one swoop preventing potentially many others from getting the files in question, than going after each downloader one by one.

You can understand the situation more or less like this: if you download from a centralized server you can more or less make the argument that you downloaded it in good faith that the person/group hosting it was licensed to do so at their own expense. If you download via p2p you automatically become one of the content providers, and if you haven't negotiated a broadcast license of some sort (like an Internet radio station) you get one sued out of you. Obviously the details are a little more complicated than that and couched in legalese, but the important parts are there.

In that case I'll stop using Frostwire on my own private internet connection, in my own home, or with my original MAC address...

Are torrents subject to the same issues, or is that dependent on the tracker?

Torrents from public trackers yes, or at least publicly accessible ones. While its still technically true for private trackers the odds are more in your favor of not getting caught, that's not to say it won't happen of course.

Well a private tracker that advocates piracy, like demonoid or the pirate bay, isn't going to rat out their own users...