RIAA Goes after LimeWire

PCM2 writes "A coalition of major recording companies sued the operators of the file-sharing program LimeWire for copyright infringement Friday, claiming the firm encourages users to trade music without permission." From thge article: " The case is the first piracy lawsuit brought against a distributor of file-sharing software since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that technology companies could be sued for copyright infringement on the grounds that they encouraged customers to steal music and movies over the Internet. In the complaint, the record companies contend LimeWire's operators are "actively facilitating, encouraging and enticing" computer users to steal music by failing to block access to copyright works and building a business model that allows them to profit directly from piracy. "

Re:in related news...

[Kelson]

You forgot to mention the forthcoming suits against Sun for NFS and Microsoft for Windows File Sharing (both of which work just fine over the public internet, if your firewall permits it.)

Anyone else remember Scour [wikipedia.org]? When it first launched, it was basically a search engine for public SMB shares.

They disappeared a few years ago. Three guesses why.

Re:RIAA needs to learn English

[vandelais]

What about the word "Steal". If you mean download songs I already purchased from the record companies in casette format that the sun melted before the concept of fair use was legal precedent, then I suppose that's stealing. Ex post facto and they can't prove I didn't.

Re:Missing the point

[Mr2001]

According to their last ruling, for a software like this to be considered OK there must be overwhelming legal use of the software. That is, like most products, it should be used legally like 60% of the time (I'm pulling numbers out of a hat).

That is a misinterpretation of the Grokster ruling and others. Look at the VCR, for example; as long as there's significant noninfringing use, the amount of infringing use doesn't matter.

Re:RIAA needs to learn English

[Chazmati]

I thought when you installed Limewire, you were actually asked whether you planned to infringe any copyrights. I answered no, of course, so I'm not sure what happens if you answer yes, but it *felt* like they were against copyright infringement. That's more like (somewhat passively) DISCOURAGING people.

Re:BS

[nevernamed]

I agree. The more that you penalize people for the things they make the less innovation you will have. Those idiots are stifling creativity.

Lack of interest much?

[Gli7ch]

Remember kids, Limewire is just a Gnutella client. If they shut down Limewire, we still have a dozen more clients [wikipedia.org] we can use just as well.

Hooray for Open Source fully distributed networks!

Re:in related news...

[Archeopteryx]

Yes, I have a legitimate use, I'll tell you what *I* use Limewire for; I trade Old Time Radio shows that are out of copyright, and unscoped airchecks of political talk shows that I actually have PERMISSION to share. I run http://www.whiterosesociety.org/ [whiterosesociety.org] where we have 100% legal content all for free.

Re:RIAA needs to learn English

[discordja]

If you choose 'I might use LimeWare for copyright infringement'

--

Important Information about Using P2P Software Safely

Lime Wire LLC does not distribute LimeWire Basic to people who intend to use it for purposes of copyright infringement.

Thank you for your interest; however, we cannot complete this download.

Re:in related news...

[ottothecow]

In your quest to avoid clear channel, I would like to make a suggestion for you: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/radio/services/th e_current/ [publicradio.org]

Click listen now and you can get either a mp3 stream or wma of the live on the air station. This station is positively amazing, it is a minneapolis station operated by minnesota public radio. It is different though in that public radio is almost always focused on news and classical music, this station plays a HUGE selection of modern non-classical music. A lot of local and independant artists as well as highly tallented artists that can be heard elsewhere (but usually not the "hit single" that you might here)...if you request it, they can play it even if its not in their typical type. They also do a lot of in-studio preformances which are all archived and available for play from their site. An added bonus is that they employ two of the most talented dj's I have ever heard (one was a long time music expert dj at the U of M's college station and the other is just a great dj who got bounced around a lot as non-cc stations got taken over by clearchannel). The two are usually back to back weeknights from around 3:00-10:00 IIRC (thier names would be Mary Lucia and Mark Wheat).

Give it a shot, and try it at a few different times because sometimes you can pick up on djs in a wierd mood (doing a themed set or something) or shows you might not be into: for example, I believe late saturday nights get deep into underground hip-hop and rap which may not be everyones cup of tea or right now as I post this they are playing a DJ Sasha set recorded sometime this week in california.

Re:in related news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Repeat this to yourself, over and over, until you get it through your thick skull:

COPYING IS NOT STEALING.

COPYING IS NOT STEALING.

COPYING IS NOT STEALING.

Re:in related news...

[niktemadur]

BTW, check out the www.wfmu.org website, it's just as insane as the programming itself.

The programming for any given show depends on the DJ, his tastes and moods. One show is industrial noise, another is children's singalongs, another is antique 78s from the 1910's and 20's, and so on and so forth, basically a little bit of absolutely everything.

One show, Incorrect Music, plays only the worst songs ever recorded. In this particular show, the worst of the worst is a travesty called Baby Lulu; whenever they play one of her 'songs', a 'Baby Lulu Alert' is issued, giving you ten seconds to switch stations or put the volume on mute for a couple of minutes, in case you're chicken.

As for the website itself, check out the archives, as every single show from the last 5 or 6 years is stored in streaming audio. We are talking about tens of thousands of hours of archived audio!