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MPAA Sues LimeWire Back From The Dead

Several major Hollywood studios don’t care that LimeWire is all but dead and buried, nor that the service was a pretty poor way to share large files such as movies.

After the record companies of the RIAA settled with LimeWire last year for $105 million, Twentieth Century Fox, Viacom, Disney, Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. now want their share of the spoils.

“The illegality of LimeWire has been fully and finally adjudicated by the Court,” the complaint as published by Courthouse News reads.

“In a related case, Arista Records LLC v. Lime Group LLC … the court found defendants liable for engaging in and facilitating massive copyright infringement.”

The complaint lists 53 infringed works including TV shows South Park and Family Guy, and movies such as Avatar, Shrek and Harry Potter.

In exchange for the relatively small outlay of filing the case, there could be a good payout for the studios if the court agrees their rights have been infringed. Which it almost certainly will.

Kerching!

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  • http://twitter.com/p2jack Jack

    hehe – fun

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Don-Dilly/1624894683 Don Dilly

    The downfall of Limewire was never the technology.
    It was the way they marketed it. Effectively marketing a neutral filesharing tool as a piracy tool.

    In that sense, I find it difficult to have any sympathy for Lime Group LLC as the consequence is to muddy the water for other developers of content neutral filesharing tools and networks.

    • http://profiles.google.com/zerianis10 Christopher Kidwell

      With all due respect, you are thinking of Metamachines there. Limewire SPECIFICALLY told you when you downloaded it AND when you installed it that it was not to be used for downloading stuff that you did not have a legitimate license for or that was not ‘freeware’.

  • http://www.facebook.com/bconover93 Ben Conover

    Even when this whole anti-piracy era dies down, people will ALWAYS find new ways pirate things. After Napster left, torrents, and LimeWire popped up.

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Don-Dilly/1624894683 Don Dilly

      Agreed, Piracy will never be as hard as it is today.

      The media companies seem to forget the ‘six degrees of separation’ and the fact drives are getting larger.

      In the early 80s 8 bit games for the most popular home computers were getting copied and passed around kids and work colleagues.

      The same happened with 16 bit Atari and Amiga computers. The only difference was that whereas today if you download something and dont like it, you delete it whereas back then you would hoard copies of everything that passed your way for the benefit of others and the ability to use your library to attract more.

      If you go back 10-12 years to the pre court case napster, the whole mp3 collection, including duplicates was only 1 to 1.5tb. Then with all the publicity of the court case, that rapidly grew to 4tb.

      Back to today with 2TB usb drives so cheap they can be passed around school or work, you dont need the net to pirate. the net is nothing more than a convenience to piracy not its enabler as the media companies would have you believe.

      • Ball Juggler

        When you go to a LAN party, what’s a movie in a friends house, maybe play some games with them… Don’t forget to bring your 2 TB HDD full of goodies for everyone to share!

        Mmmm… now that i think about it… I wonder if chips have a “for personal use only” kind of “license” … mmm…

        • http://profiles.google.com/zerianis10 Christopher Kidwell

          At one time, they were trying to get that but the hard drive manufacturers put their foot down and told them that was totally technologically unfeasible.

  • http://www.facebook.com/casey.fall Casey Fall

    Maybe they will sue Napster again… Besides the legit users seem to get the short stick. Lets use Ubisoft as an example… http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120203/07550617650/ubisoft-cuts-off-legit-players-with-drm-server-migration-pirates-play.shtml

  • http://twitter.com/Nchalada Tony

    This makes no sense at all. Lime Group IS dead, for all intents and purposes, surely there’s nothing left for the vultures to grab!

    • Xen0

      Your forgetting about their souls…

      • Danny

        you mean r-soles

  • LIMEWIRE-DAFUQ

    how did limewire make 105M USD to pay that settlement? Wtf…!

    • http://twitter.com/Mathew30 Mathew Lisett

      best guess is they didnt. and riaa never got the 105m, but just felt good for them to win that amoutn ., so if im right, its going to be the same thign with the rest of them chasing .

    • Bob

      These things aren’t about winning money, they’re about creating precedent in the courtroom.

      If limewire is legally wrong, if piratebay is legally wrong, if megaupload is legally wrong… you are slowly building a set of laws that will make it very difficult for companies like this to exist.

      IMO, it’s for the better. We will survive without music and movie theft, just as we did before.

      Then again, I appear to be in the small minority of people who believe the Internet actually does need some regulation. I feel it is out of control and that we have become accustomed to having a “society” built on a lack of law. This, to me, seems inevitably dangerous.

      • Anonymous

        We started copying everything when the cassette was invented. We can’t stop. If internet gets regulated, we’ll find a way around it. (reddit.com/r/darknetplan)

      • Ball Juggler

        Agree that it’s all about establishing a legal precedent …
        On your other ideas though… you can shove them .. That “we have become accustomed to having a “society” built on a lack of law” is actually a very good thing… but some people get scared when they don’t feel the comfort of the shackle i guess…

      • Anonymous

        Why is that a bad thing? Every restriction put on anything will prevent that thing from either growing or innovating. If you shut down any form of file sharing, then what the fuck is left?

      • thunderclap morgridge

        I one wish is that I could drop you in 1941 Warsaw, speaking German. Once you see and hear true tyranny you will realize that the Internet’s needs to remain as it is. Media will eventually innovate or change their business model.
        As for a society built on lack of law because people are download copies of movies? How about a society that stated unless you were Caucasian, blue eyes and blond you were inferior? How about Syria right now where their leader is shelling cities because he is offended by them? And you want to make it easier for them to operate? An inch given to the mpaa and riaa is a mile taken by the Chinese, the Syrians, the Iranians and any other future repressive regime.
        Oh, and presicent doesn’t exist in a vacuum. A dead company is just that.

        • Scott Burry

          And drop them in Israel too, so they can feel the pain of Palestinian people being regulated down to when they can eat, get some sleep, or medical attention, and where, when, and how much. I’m not in favor of over regulation

      • FBI RATS

        Spot on mate

      • SomeAsian

        Judicial law is the most dangerous form of rule making. Though useful, it is often unconstitutional and difficult to overturn, especially when there is a long list of legal precedent to back it up.

        Screw the judges and the legislators. The best government is the one that governs least.

      • DeRefMan

        I’m not in agreement Bob. There is only one thing certain greedy rich folks don’t control or own (yet). The internet must be kept wild and free for as long as possible unless we are to succumb to greedy selfish people owning and controlling everything. At least that is how I see it – Scott – the old guy

  • Anonymous

    lol, those money grubbing studios never cease to amaze me wow.
    Be-Anon.tk

    • Colin

      Flagged

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  • Mwhahaha

    I thought limewire was mainly about disturbing porn? people shared films on that thing? Blimey!

  • KANGbowo’K

    Agreed with everything you wrote,,,,,

  • Pingback: Hollywood studios latest to sue LimeWire – CNET | IMoju

  • I’m 12 and what is this?

    I remember the days when every single person in my school said they used limewire. Yes, everyone! in the UK… see, it’s what everyone does ^_^

    man… that was only round about 6 years ago O_O amazing how times have changed.

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  • Miami Sunset

    This is just a show of force in the hopes that other systems will shut down as MegaUpload did. It’s highly unlikely that Limewire has any money at all to pay. But you can’t shut down torrents as they did with Limewire because it’s not centralized around a specific company.

  • Pingback: News in Brief: One more thing: Samsung brings darkness to Superbowl | Butingtech Technology Buzz

  • Alyssa Blindy

    Money money gimme money. They got money I get money I need money give us money.

  • Pingback: MPAA Sues LimeWire Back From The Dead | U Torrent Free Download

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  • Pingback: The Technology Blog: MPAA Sues LimeWire Back From The Dead

  • Anonymous

    Didn’t Avatar come out after LimeWire was shut down?

  • Pingback: MPAA Sues LimeWire Back From The Dead - techtime's posterous

  • J.M. Becker

    LimeWire was considered liable, because they owned the client software and derived profit from it. It is a shoddy case nevertheless, and I’m not defending it. On the other hand, if it were a non-profit community, and the software was not proprietary. It would be possible to avoid such litigation, this is why other clients are not usually sued today.

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