In a decision that could mean sweeping changes to file sharing in the United States, a federal court has found the company that operates file-sharing service LimeWire liable for copyright infringement, according to court records reviewed by CNET.
U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood, for the Southern District of New York, on Tuesday granted summary judgment in favor of the music industry’s claims that Lime Group, parent of LimeWire software maker Lime Wire, and founder Mark Gorton committed copyright infringement, engaged in unfair competition, and induced copyright infringement.
“The evidence demonstrates that [Lime Wire] optimized LimeWire’s features to ensure that users can download digital recordings, the majority of which are protected by copyright,” Wood said in her 59-page decision. “And that [Lime Wire] assisted users in committing infringement.”
In other news, shotgun induces murder, crowbar induces robbery and knowledge induces terrorism.
“In other news, shotgun induces murder, crowbar induces robbery and knowledge induces terrorism.”
This is a bad analogy. The ruling was against Limewire’s software/services, not file sharing software in general.
Limewire was clearly designed and used for illegally downloading music and movies. Their business model was built around getting people to use their software to download copyrighted material. They made money by selling “premium” versions of Limewire and installing spyware on users computers. Everything about them seems scummy.
#1 Somebody_Else
I agree that LimeWire has dodgy practises, but I fear this ruling will be seen a precedent to be used against file sharing in general.
Gosh, back when Hotmail only allowed 2MB attachments, I used Limewire to transfer large spreadsheets to team members. Probably a better way to do that, but Limewire worked.
Now I wish I had looked around their website some more. Never struck me as a torrent aggregator.
Good! Its about time this+ hemorrhoid was removed from the ass of the internet!
EVERY single PC tyat has this piece of shit installed becomes riddled with spyware and virus within hours of any downloading taking place.
Z,
GOOD COMMENT..
I have removed more CRAP off systems with Limewire on it, then ANY OTHER system software.
Also this is a beginning, with Piratebay, about Torrent progs being RIPPED off the net.
But, i have mentioned before about PROGRAM PRICES.. with the internet they can DROP prices in 1/2 if not more. AND LESS people would want to pirate $50+ programs, when they can get them for $10-20.
Just consider 1 facet of publishing a Program.
PACKAGE/SHIP/distribution.
On the NET..
NO BOX.
NO TRUCK CARRYING 1,000,000 boxes all over.
NO STORAGE of those 1,000,000 boxes.
NO TRUCKING/TRANSPORT COSTS.
NO MAKING/BURNING 1,000,000 DVD’s.
NO LOST products..
NO EXTRA product in a store sitting on a Shelf, NOT BEING SOLD. NO OVER STOCK.
LESS MISSED SALES…as 1 store has all the extra goods, and 6 other stores RAN OUT.
IF’ a Product is a BOMB’, you didnt MAKE 1,000,000 disks that DONT SELL.
now SINCE THIS could drop prices A LOT..already. Do we have to have MONEY SPENT on DRM/copyright. WHICH would add another $1-5 per DISK. no disk, NO DRM, CHEAPER PRICE.
With NO DRM checkers, remote computers and PERSONS to monitor it…we could ALSO get rid of a few lawyers also..EVEN CHEAPER..
Another point..YOU DONT NEED A MAJOR CORP to be a distributor. ATARI buys up progs and sells them WITH THEIR NAME ON IT.
Don’t forget frostwire and gtk-gnutella! I prefer Ktorrent for kde 3.5.x Knowledge should be free! Get rid of wingdoze and install Debian stable 5.04 follow wiki install codecs and piss on microsuck!
#6 and if everyone did that the bulls eye would be painted on the back of Linux rather than MS.
I think this is a key sentence: And that [Lime Wire] assisted users in committing infringement.”
Making a program to share files should be legal. I use Google Docs and email for that. Helping someone use a product you made to break the law makes you a criminal.
ECA- I agree with you and zybch…but nothing was worse the KaZaa. Should have called it Malware city. For more on this see ACTA. Working behind close doors…so you don’t have to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement
Downloading viruses is copyright infringment?
Needs asking, with broadband speed increasing and service costs dropping, thumb drives down to $2/GB, whether the P2P (torrent) model is necessary any more? Kids don’t torrent, they hate waiting, they are more security aware than their parents and older siblings. They just burn a pocket full of USB memory sticks and swap or sell them with their friends.
“LimeWire’s features to ensure that users can download digital recordings, the majority of which are protected by copyright”
But there are a lot of recordings that you’re allowed to give away.
So just because the industry cabal that produces most of the recordings chooses some fucked up copyright, a programmer has to purposely cripple their program’s ability to download *any* recording?
How is this enforceable? Or decent? Or a benefit to the public?
Good point brm. You picked up what the judge missed, or was paid not to see. I believe what we are seeing is the predicted end to the Internet as we have come to know it.
The United States of America, the only country in the world where being illegal is legal and being legal is illegal.
#10 Yes, physical media is the ideal way to file share. The people you are friends with act as a great filter. Everybody has friends who have crappy taste in music and movies; just don’t trade stuff with them.
#12 The overwhelming use of these sites is to exchange copyrighted material and everyone knows it. The prevailing legal climate has been to exempt the toolmaker from liability for the actions of tool users. The reasoning is that other toolmakers in far more important businesses could be in danger. Now they are. Honeyman hits it on the head. If Craigslist were a publicly traded company it would get an immediate sell recommendation.
ECA,
You are missing a lot of business factors.
Marketing, shelf space, how DRM is here to stay, the need for aggregate stores (Steam, iTunes, XBox Live, etc.) for publicity.
Businesses don’t deflate to a consumer paradigm in the absence of piracy or in a utopia with no shipping or distribution costs [actually near zero costs, there remain a minuscule cost].
In free market economics, you would be right.
In the real world, we don’t actually have a free market because it requires unlimited producers and consumers and doesn’t involve complex regional and local laws.
Neither the movie industry or gaming industry operate fall close to the “unlimited producers/suppliers” model.
As a result, they will seek to maximize revenue by charging the highest prices they believe the market will bare.
And our consumer education is bad, limiting the effects of free market economics.
And much piracy is done by teens with no income or limited means to purchase products (i.e. no credit card = buy online exactly how?)
And then there are advantages to getting a product in front of someone’s face at Best Buy like a big Halo 3 cut-out of Master Chief and on bottles of Mt. Dew and on Burger King bags.
Or product placement. Or merchandising (Toy Story toys to coincide with movie releases).
Marketing works. And it inflates the perceive value in the minds of consumers and creates the whole social peer-pressure thing.
The world is a far more complicated place for non-commodity products.
Ok, now someone needs to charge Google with aiding and abetting. copyright infringement. If you google the name of a software product, the very first page will usually show available cracks. Google could easily prevent that, but can’t be bothered.
If Google thinks that my company’s intellectual property should be free, then maybe they should also post the source code to PageRank.
Who names their kid “Kimba”? Wasn’t that the lion in the Disney movie?
The gun analogy is not parallel. It’s contrived to sloganeer the argument, not make people think, just issue a “Yeah. What he said.”
Lime Wire Pro, for instance, has no defensive use. And the finding was that it was purposefully altered to facilitate theft without any safeguard at all.
Are you seriously trying to say that LimeWire users are NOT abusing its capabilities and are NOT ripping off intellectual property much of the time? Or that such use is a completely unintended collateral use?
Are you saying that LimeWire strictly did NOT optimize its software to be much more easily used to purloin IP?
One might say that lock picking tools are a better analogy. Good luck with being busted with those in your pocket, unless you are in the bonded locksmithing trade and can show that you’re on a job with them.
#19:
“And the finding was that it was purposefully altered to facilitate theft without any safeguard at all.”
Please explain what this means.
Like, by this logic, photocopiers “facilitate theft” because the manufacturer doesn’t make them spit out blank pages when you try to copy library books with them.
And can we please quit using analogies to explain EVERYTHING?
It’s software that does this and that – it’s not a gun, or a lockpick, or a car.
Try this for a change: attempt an understanding of something in terms of itself.
It’s mind-expanding, really.
Plus then things like the news can’t just gloss over the story by saying stupid shit like, “it’s exactly like lockpicks! you wouldn’t want everyone to have lockpicks!”
Actually, the media industries lobbying Congress for permanent copyrights of everything, retro-actively back to 1926, induces copyright infringement. If they could copyright Mozart and Bach’s works, they’d do that too. Classical music is about all that’s left of our music heritage, that isn’t entangled in 100 year copyrights. But anytime sales takes a plunge, like because of the economy. The industry blames piracy. And they put jukeboxes in the school lunch rooms, to make sure the kids want the copyrighted music. My high school had one. I’ll bet that old Seaburg is still there.
What’s truly laughable about all this, is how many times I’ve heard something that was a close copy of another artist’s work. And how often they all borrow, or build upon each other’s ideas. And how even movies and Tv shows managed to copy or steal from each other. And nobody is bothering to sue anymore, over this. Not since George Lucas’ suite against Battlestar Galactica’s creator failed. I guess he thought he owned “Space”. And yet Star Wars stole or borrowed ideas from old Erol Flynn movies, and old WW1 dogfight films. But it’s always Ok, when it’s the wealthy and well connected, who do the stealin. Not the rest of us, peasants.
#23:
Sounds exactly like the patent cross-licensing racket.
brm: at your first opportunity, slap a $20 bill onto a color copier and hit Copy. Watch what happens. Or scan one and bring it into any recent version of Photoshop.
@21
The above analogies are accurate for the situation just because a technology can be used to do wrong doesn’t make the technology itself wrong.
By that judges logic my speakers facilitate the possible theft of shitty pop music (really need to stop letting my brother on my pc).
My guess is the judge was paid off by the lobbyists and if anyone could find out if they were part of a pro-copyright organization that would at the least make any and all judgments by that judge null and void.
sidenote: i think the late George Carlin’s comment “This country isn’t free it was bought and paid for by lobbyist years ago” fits perfectly.
Wow… limewire actually sought to insure that files got transferred????
I guess the court prefers Microsoft’s model where the software doesn’t actually work half the time.
limewire isn’t at fault. they should be going after the downloaders, but i guess as long as they get paid by SOMEONE, the record labels don’t really care.
#25:
“slap a $20 bill onto a color copier and hit Copy. Watch what happens.”
Uhh, helloooo, that’s not even close to what I was talking about.
The copier doesn’t copy the dollar bill, but it will still make copies of a book or magazine. The authors of Limewire weren’t taken to court because people were trading images of dollar bills with their software.
If I write a program that lets you share sound files, how is it even *possible* for it to know when those sound files contain copyrighted material?
15,
you are right and wrong also.
The corps see a way to cut costs, and KEEP MORE PROFIT.
The main cost any more is to PAY the programmers as little as possible. BUY the program from the programmers and YOU OWN it to sell as you wish.
(Look up Atari). there is more money in BUYING AND DISTRIBUTION/SALES. then there is in creating the software.
“As a result, they will seek to maximize revenue by charging the highest prices they believe the market will bare.”
THIS is your fallacy. And theirs. THEY DONT WANT TO DROP PRICES. They LOVE the wages they are earning and want MORE. THAT is the NEW(last 15-20 years) idea of being in business. CUT every corner that you can and DONT LOWER prices. Some other company/group can MAKE Music/movie and the CORP buys it. The corp is only the controller of distribution. They OWN/know all the locations to send it to, and NO other group can Distribute to those areas. Thats why the little company can not get into the business.
“And much piracy is done by teens with no income or limited means to purchase products (i.e. no credit card = buy online exactly how?)”
Almost..but no pickle here.
Think if PIRACY as a business model(there are 2 types of piracy this is only 1)
The more people are disassociated by the BUSINESS the more piracy will happen. If prices get to high, the MORE people will pirate.
In the old corp model, Corps would lower prices to let the consumer THINK they were dropping prices and encourage Purchasing..
ITS NOT HAPPENING.
“Or product placement. Or merchandising (Toy Story toys to coincide with movie releases).
Marketing works. And it inflates the perceive value in the minds of consumers and creates the whole social peer-pressure thing.”
Are you old enough to remember that Advert goods/toys, USED to be almost free..Give-aways. NOW they use them to SELL BURGERS and Kids meals.. I find it better to let a story aggregate on the net. GIVE samples of the programs/music/movies to sites to evaluate and let it LAND SLIDE.
I DONT like them trying to SLAM a POOR game into my face and FORCE me to buy it. 99% of the time its a CRAP game/movie/audio.
My concerns is the availability of the OLD STUFF. you dont and WONT see it. If the corps dont want to make it available, SOMEONE ELSE WILL.(I HOPE)..
how about the..
MA’ and Pa’ kettle movies?
Francis the talking mule?(before Mr. Ed tv series)
The Phantom toll booth?
Smothers brothers Albums?
Laugh-in?
Interstate 76 and 82 games??
TRIBES 2(has been released can you find it)(I did)
RELEASE or give access to ALL the old stuff.
There is more music being HELD back then you could listen to in 10 years at 24/7, from people you have NEVER heard of.
There are enough MOVIES/VIDEO/TV series in vaults, then you could watch in 2 years at 24/7 and NO SLEEP. ALL crumbling into DUST.
RELEASE them, let the world see them, and MAYBE someone can fix/complete them to NEW DIGITAL FORMAT..
I know people willing to SIT and digitize ALL the music they have in STOCK. And you could pay them $10 per hour or $10 per album to DO IT. And it would give you a FULL list of ALL that ever was.
We will have to ban the voice telephone then. Mobsters, terrorists, stalkers, all use the telephone. We must eliminate phones for the good of the public.