[release]The end of Lime Wire the company as it has existed for years appears to be at hand.
U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood issued an injunction today against the company that operates the long popular file-sharing software, LimeWire, and requires managers there to disable "the searching, downloading, uploading, file trading and/or file distribution functionality, and/or all functionality" of the LimeWire software, Lime Wire announced.
In May, Wood, who serves the Southern District of New York, 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.
LimeWire, the software, was released 10 years ago and quickly emerged as one of the favorite ways to pass pirated music across the Web. Gorton and his company have acknowledged making millions from offering the software.
"While this is not our ideal path, we hope to work with the music industry in moving forward," said a Lime Wire spokesperson in a statement. "We look forward to embracing necessary changes and collaborating with the entire music industry in the future."
Lime Wire continues to exist but no longer operates as a file-sharing service, the spokesperson said. Exactly what the New York-based company will do in the future is unclear. At this point, the company's chances of licensing music for Spoon appear to be small and its prospects dim.
Obviously, there is little that the court can do about software that is already released. But in her order, Wood tried to close the door on any further releases, upgrades, advertising of the software or the creation of any comparable software in the future. She also wants Lime Wire to do its best to discourage the use of the LimeWire software already in the wild, what she called "legacy software."
"Using its best efforts," Wood wrote, "Lime Wire shall use all reasonable technological means to immediately cease and desist the current infringement of the Copyrighted Works by Legacy users through the LimeWire System and Software and to prevent and inhibit future infringement of copyright works."
She ordered Gorton and employees to establish "default settings in the legacy software that block the sharing of unauthorized media files" and offer users tools to remove the software from their hard drives. Wood ordered Lime Wire to create a copyright filter that would work on legacy software. In addition, Wood required Gorton and crew to first get the permission of the music labels before building any new legal version of LimeWire.
This is not the end of Gorton or his company's troubles. The Recording Industry Association of America, which filed the copyright complaint against Gorton and Lime Wire in 2007, will now seek damages that could easily top $1 billion. That phase of the trial is scheduled to begin in January. A group of music publishers has also filed a copyright complaint against Lime Wire.
According to music industry sources, Gorton and the Recording Industry Association of America were in settlement negotiations for a long time as the judge deliberated over whether to impose the injunction.
Gorton offered to license music from the top four record companies for Spoon, Lime Wire's little-known legal music service. The deal fell through after Gorton's lawyers insisted that the music labels allow LimeWire to continue to operate for a year so users could be moved over to Spoon.
The labels totally rejected the idea. RIAA lawyers have told the judge that LimeWire costs the record labels about $500 million in lost music sales every month. They wouldn't wait a year. They wouldn't wait a month. They assert they have taken a beating from Lime Wire for too long.
"For the better part of the last decade, Limewire and Gorton have violated the law," the RIAA said in a statement. "The court has now signed an injunction that will start to unwind the massive piracy machine that Lime Wire and Gorton used to enrich themselves immensely."
More to come
[/release]
[url=http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20020786-261.html]Source[/url]
[url=http://www.limewire.com/]Limewire's defunct homepage[/url]
Limewire is an outdated piece of junk
that sucks
nothing bad about this
limewire is terrible bow down to your linux distro torrent overlords
Good.
90% of all computers my relatives have asked me to "fix" have had limewire as the root cause of the problem.
Buying music is for pussies.
Why should we pay to listen?
[highlight](User was banned for this post ("Hey look at me, I'm a cool music pirate" - Jaanus))[/highlight]
Oh well, We just eliminated one of the most bloated and virus ridden distro services of all time.
[QUOTE=Hellghast;25665211]Oh well, We just eliminated one of the most bloated and virus ridden distro services of all time.[/QUOTE]
Not really, If you actually know what you're downloading and not clicking away like a retard then you're safe
thank god. that place was so damn full of viruses, it makes a hooker look like a Nun.
wow! this and kazaa were my first p2p programs and i will never forget them. thanks for all of the songs limewire!
Where do I download all my legal viruses now?!
[QUOTE=Prof. Layton;25665288]wow! this and kazaa were my first p2p programs and i will never forget them. thanks for all of the songs limewire![/QUOTE]
this
Limewire wasn't even remotely good at any point, at least in my experiences.
[QUOTE=Prof. Layton;25665288]wow! this and kazaa were my first p2p programs and i will never forget them. thanks for all of the songs limewire![/QUOTE]
Mine was a 20pack of floppy discs, and a command-line NNTP client.
... Fuck.
Anyone know any other form of music software?
[QUOTE=Hardpoint Nomad;25665231]Not really, If you actually know what you're downloading and not clicking away like a retard then you're safe[/QUOTE]
Hardly, it got cluster fucked with fake advertising files, you could barely get a hold of an original file.
[QUOTE=JoeSkylynx;25665395]... Fuck.
Anyone know any other form of music software?[/QUOTE]
iTunes
[QUOTE=JoeSkylynx;25665395]... Fuck.
Anyone know any other form of music software?[/QUOTE]
The many other Gnutella clients that suck half as bad.
[QUOTE=JoeSkylynx;25665395]... Fuck.
Anyone know any other form of music software?[/QUOTE]
Or Rhapsody; I personally like Amazon's direct download service.
R.I.P old friend :patriot:
To everyone saying "nothing of value was lost", you do realize that this sets precedent to go after uTorrent, Bittorrent, Deluge, so forth right
the only thing i got from limewire were viruses
fuck that shit
Although it was bloated, riddled with spam and never really seemed to grasp any accurate search results, I liked limewire
Why do they bother? Using Limewire is like swimming in a sewer water processing plant.
I'm sure that anyone trying to download music from there got what they deserved for pirating anyway.
it may have set the road for other torrenting programs, but god it sucked, my obscure linux distros were full of viruses.
Download shit folks, soon they will close the pipes.
[QUOTE=ZekeTwo;25665504]To everyone saying "nothing of value was lost", you do realize that this sets precedent to go after uTorrent, Bittorrent, Deluge, so forth right[/QUOTE]
Nothing of value will be lost.
I remember using this in 2005, good times.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.
