TorrentFreak

• enigmax
• November 19, 2010
• 100
• limewire,
  LimeWire Pirate Edition,
  Meta Pirate,
  RIAA
• Print

The RIAA has claimed in court papers that the official LimeWire company has breached last month’s court injunction against it by somehow having something to do with LimeWire Pirate Edition. The RIAA says that the site, which linked to the rogue software, was created by a current or former LimeWire employee. This forced the company to move against the Pirate Edition website and have it shut down.

Earlier this month we reported that after being effectively outlawed by a court injunction, the LimeWire file-sharing client had been resurrected by a secret dev team. Based on the last functioning version of LimeWire (5.5.10), LimeWire Pirate Edition no longer relied on the official LimeWire servers and had all adware and spyware removed.

Today, CNET reports that the RIAA is claiming in court papers that due to the existence of LimeWire Pirate Edition, somehow the official LimeWire company is in breach of the injunction handed down by a federal judge.

“Defendants have demonstrated in no uncertain terms that they either will not or cannot do what the injunction commands,” CNET quotes the RIAA as saying.

But how could LimeWire be responsible for the actions of those behind LimeWire Pirate Edition? Simple. The RIAA is claiming that the site which carried links to the software was created by someone “either formerly or presently a Lime Wire employee.”

To this end, the RIAA has asked for LimeWire’s assistance to find out the identity of “Meta Pirate”, the individual fronting the LimeWire Pirate Edition operation. Following this pressure, LimeWire took action against the Pirate Edition’s website – and had it shut down.

Unsurprisingly, Meta Pirate is not happy and has told TorrentFreak that the RIAA is exploiting the release of LimeWire Pirate Edition to gain leverage in its case against Lime Wire.

“This is nothing more than cheap and dishonest opportunism,” he told us.

“The monkeys who created LimeWire Pirate Edition are not associated in any way with Lime Wire LLC. Because of the RIAA’s underhanded tactics, Lime Wire has used a court order from the U.S. Southern District Court of New York to shut down our website.”

Meta Pirate is well aware that it’s impossible to contest the court order while remaining anonymous so the site will stay down for now. Nevertheless, the software remains available from The Pirate Bay and other websites.

“LimeWire is and always has been open source software, licensed under the GNU GPL,” he concludes. “We created a derivative work from the published source code, as any user of LimeWire has the right to do. We encourage other curious monkeys to do the same.”

Earlier this month we reported that after being effectively outlawed by a court injunction, the LimeWire file-sharing client had been resurrected by a secret dev team. Based on the last...