BitTorrent aside, some file-sharers have turned to so-called YouTube-downloaders – software and services that rip music from YouTube videos and convert them to carry-anywhere MP3s. Needless to say, the recording labels don’t like these either.

Unfortunately YouTube videos carry low-bitrate audio and for many the quality just doesn’t come up to scratch, but there is another YouTube-like service that doesn’t have that problem. Grooveshark carries a huge range of high-quality user-uploaded music ready for web-based streaming. However, in common with its video-focused counterpart, Grooveshark doesn’t permit downloading of MP3s. Not as standard at least.

Enter Groovejaar, a brand new piece of open source music downloading software that essentially takes Grooveshark and turns it into LimeWire, but with super-fast downloads, great quality MP3s – and absolutely no malware.

The software itself is small at just 1.4mb and requires Java to run. A few seconds later and Groovejaar is downloaded, installed and ready to go.

As can be seen from the screenshot below, we immediately searched for music by file-sharing favorite Dan Bull, but the other feature illustrated is “Get Top Songs” which shows Grooveshark’s most-popular tracks of the day or month.

Groovejaar is very easy to use and has just a few user settings to contend with. The most important initially is to set a hard drive location where music can be downloaded to. After that users can entertain themselves with different skins and an option for multiple simultaneous downloads. Users can also pull in their own playlists from external sites.

But perhaps the burning question is this – is it legal?

To discover that we should perhaps consider Grooveshark’s legal status first. Generally the RIAA has a problem with Grooveshark – they say that the service is unlicensed and the implication is that this means it’s illegal. Grooveshark disagree.

“So let’s set the record straight: there is nothing illegal about what Grooveshark offers to consumers,” said Senior VP of Information Products at Grooveshark, Paul Geller, earlier this year.

“Laws come from Congress. Licenses come from businesses,” he explained. “Grooveshark is completely legal because we comply with the laws passed by Congress, but we are not licensed by every label (yet).”

Geller noted that as long as Grooveshark is DMCA-compliant and responds appropriately to takedown requests, the service is legal under US law. In effect, Grooveshark is just like YouTube, only without the videos. Someone complains about user-uploaded content on either site, it gets taken down.

Groovejaar doesn’t carry any of its own content, it’s all carried by Grooveshark, so its creator is physically unable to comply with any takedown requests. The ‘Get Top Songs’ feature may indeed pull up a lot of unlicensed content, but those lists are maintained by Grooveshark. In this sense the Groovejaar client is ‘dumb’ and content agnostic.

Some might argue that because it provides downloads rather than streaming then somehow the legalities change. This is often a controversial point but really it shouldn’t be. Whether it’s a video ‘streamed’ from YouTube or a track ‘streamed’ from Grooveshark, it still gets downloaded to the user’s computer. The only difference is the length of time it stays there.

The situation can be summed up as follows. Watching infringing content on YouTube is comparable to doing the same on Grooveshark. It might still be illegal, but people are never sued for watching or listening to unauthorized content on YouTube and they won’t be sued for doing the same with Grooveshark or Groovejaar. Not least because they’re impossible to track legally.

If the copyright holders don’t want their stuff on either service, it is their responsibility to take it down. That’s the way it works.

Finally, for Firefox fans there is another way of downloading MP3s from Grooveshark. The Groove Shredder plugin works nicely but rather than being a stand-alone app it embeds itself in the Grooveshark website.

Groovejaar can be downloaded here and Groove Shredder here.

Source: Who Needs LimeWire? Open Source Groovejaar’s In Town

Merrill, who was Chief Information Officer and Vice President of Engineering at Google, left the search giant in 2008 after being poached by EMI, a key member label of the RIAA.

At EMI he took up the impressive position of Chief Operating Officer of New Music and President of Digital Business, despite admitting this week that he knew the music industry was “collapsing”.

“The RIAA said it isn’t that we are making bad music, but the ‘dirty file sharing guys’ are the problem,” he said during his speech as quoted by ComputerWorld.

“Going to sue customers for file sharing is like trying to sell soap by throwing dirt on your customers.”

But those “dirty file-sharing guys” had an even dirtier secret. During his stint at EMI, Merrill profiled the behavior of LimeWire users and discovered something rather interesting. Those same file-sharing “thieves” were also iTunes’ biggest spenders.

“That’s not theft, that’s try-before-you-buy marketing and we weren’t even paying for it… so it makes sense to sue them,” Merrill said, while undoubtedly rolling his eyes.

That same “try-before-you-buy” discovery was echoed in another study we reported on last week which found that users of pirate sites, including the recently-busted Kino.to, buy more DVDs, visit the cinema more often and on average spend more at the box office than their ‘honest’ counterparts.

Merrill’s words yesterday are not the only pragmatic file-sharing related comments he’s made in recent years. Almost immediately after his 2008 EMI appointment, he made comments which didn’t necessarily tow the company line.

“For example, there’s a set of data that shows that file sharing is actually good for artists. Not bad for artists. So maybe we shouldn’t be stopping it all the time. I don’t know,” Merrill said.

“Obviously, there is piracy that is quite destructive but again I think the data shows that in some cases file sharing might be okay. What we need to do is understand when is it good, when it is not good…Suing fans doesn’t feel like a winning strategy,” he concluded.

Less than a year later, Merrill was forced out by EMI.

Source: Former Google CIO: LimeWire Pirates Were iTunes’ Best Customers

Limewire agreed to pay $105 million to compensate the major music labels for damages suffered but allegedly agreed to settle with some Indie labels too. To date the labels say they haven’t received a penny, a situation they intend to remedy through the courts.

The labels are being represented by Netherlands-based Merlin BV, an umbrella organization which protects the rights of its members in 25 countries, representing up to 30% of global music sales.

On July 13th, Merlin filed a “Breach of Contract” lawsuit at the New York Southern District Court against Lime Wire LLC, Lime Group LLC and company owner Mark Gorton.

According to the complaint, in 2008 Merlin agreed not to sue LimeWire, opting to let the RIAA case against the file-sharing service run its course instead. In return, LimeWire is said to have agreed that in the event it settled with the RIAA (it did, for $105m) then Merlin would get a comparable cash payment, adjusted to account for its smaller market share.

But no payment has been forthcoming and having run out of patience Merlin wants its share of the LimeWire spoils, a minimum of $5 million. Merlin is being represented by lawfirm Pryor Cashman.

Separately, last week Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler announced that his Consumer Protection Division had resolved an investigation into the LimeWire software following allegations that some of its users had inadvertently shared personal documents online.

LimeWire accepted responsibility and under the terms of its settlement posted a notice on its homepage warning users of the software that sensitive information may have leaked and that LimeWire should be uninstalled.

Source: Indie Labels Lose Patience and Sue LimeWire For Millions

“The CBS Defendants have been the main distributor of LimeWire software and have promoted this and other P2P systems in order to directly profit from wide-scale copyright infringement. Internet users have downloaded more then [sic] 220 million copies from Defendants’ website, found at Download.com, since 2008,” the original complaint read.

The complaint further noted that Download.com is still promoting various other P2P-applications which the majority of people use to infringe copyrights. By promoting this software in return for money and by showing users how to download, the CBS defendants are willingly contributing to copyright infringement, the plaintiffs claimed.

FilmOn’s Alki David, the driving force behind the suit who himself was sued by CBS Interactive for copyright infringement, seemed determined to put up a fight. Nonetheless, the suing parties decided to voluntarily dismiss the case yesterday, as Wired reports.

On the surface this appears to be good news for CNET and the other defendants, but the opposite is true. As it turns out many copyright holders have approached Alki David with a request to be added to the lawsuit.

“Since the time of the filing of the original Complaint by plaintiffs in this case, numerous artists and other copyright owners have approached plaintiff Alki David about potentially joining this lawsuit as plaintiffs,” the plaintiff’s attorney’s write to the District Court judge.

“As a result, the current plaintiffs intend to amend and are in the process of working to amend this suit to add further plaintiffs and additional copyrighted works,” the notice adds.

Since it takes quite a bit of time to add the new parties and potentially thousands of copyrighted works to the complaint, the plaintiffs decided to dismiss the current case for now. They expect to file a broader complaint on behalf of many more copyright holders in the near future.

Source: Piracy Lawsuit Against CNET Dismissed – For Now

Today the news breaks that FrostWire will also leave the Gnutella network, an announcement that could be seen as the final nail in Gnutella’s coffin. Unable to cope with this increasingly spam-ridden network, Frostwire’s upcoming 5.0 release will be a BitTorrent-only affair.

“We decided to go all out with BitTorrent and spend our time making FrostWire the best BitTorrent client out there, and not fighting the endless spam battle. There are many opportunities to take in the realm of legal file-sharing and social networking that you will see happen as FrostWire 5 keeps evolving,” the FrostWire team told TorrentFreak.

When FrostWire was first released in 2004 it was nearly identical to its big brother LimeWire, using the Gnutella network to share files. In 2006 FrostWire first added BitTorrent support, but the client’s core user base continued to mainly use the Gnutella network.

However, in recent months spam took control over the Gnutella network, and the FrostWire team eventually decided to focus entirely on BitTorrent.

“The team decided to listen to what’s happening in the p2p world and to make FrostWire a great BitTorrent client that makes BitTorrent easy to use,” FrostWire states. “The Gnutella Protocol is an amazing piece of technology, but one which the team is no longer interested in or capable of developing further.”

With the upcoming release of FrostWire 5 its users will only be able to download files via BitTorrent. As can be seen in the screenshot above, users don’t have to leave the client as all search results are presented within FrostWire. In the latest beta build the search results come from various BitTorrent sites including isoHunt and BTJunkie.

By presenting the search results in FrostWire most users won’t have much trouble adapting to the massive underlying changes. On the other hand, for the existing BitTorrent community it means that a few million ForstWire users will be added to their swarms, which is generally a good thing.

With its large user base FrostWire will become one of the most-used BitTorrent clients once most of its users move over to the upcoming 5.0 release. For Gnutella, however, the future is looking more and more bleak. Although there are still a few Gnutella-based clients out there, its unclear how long they will remain usable.

For those developers who appreciate a challenge, the latest version of the Gnutella-based FrostWire client is available at the BitBucket repository.

Source: FrostWire ‘Kills’ Gnutella to Go All BitTorrent

“The CBS Defendants have been the main distributor of LimeWire software and have promoted this and other P2P systems in order to directly profit from wide-scale copyright infringement. Internet users have downloaded more then [sic] 220 million copies from Defendants’ website, found at Download.com, since 2008,” the complaint reads.

As the case moves on some interesting arguments are appearing on the table. One of the most controversial items overlooked thus far concerns current Warner Music director and CNET co-founder Shelby Bonnie. Believe it or not, Bonnie served on the board of directors at Warner Music and was also the CEO of CNET, all at the time LimeWire was being sued.

As The Music Void points out, Bonnie was invited to join the Warner Music board in November 2005, just 4 months after the landmark Grokster ruling. At that time Bonnie was still CNET’s CEO, a position he gave up during the fall of 2006. After that, he continued to serve on CNET’s board of directors until March 2007.

Since it’s no secret that CNET made a healthy profit from the millions of LimeWire clients that were downloaded from its site every month, this could lead to the awkward conclusion that a prominent Warner Music director profited from piracy.

While it should be noted that LimeWire hadn’t been convicted of doing anything illegal at the time, it is quite unusual that the CEO of LimeWire’s main distribution platform was simultaneously a director of one of the record labels going after LimeWire in court (and launching numerous individual file-sharers).

It would definitely be interesting to hear the thoughts of the former CNET CEO on the issue, should he be called as a witness. Perhaps Bonnie opted to keep the healthy revenue stream alive until the court banned it, despite the massive losses Warner Music was claiming?

Whatever the case, the above must have been the topic of some heated discussions at the Warner Music board of directors. After all, it wouldn’t really be far-fetched to compare it to a Universal Pictures director who also serves on the board of The Pirate Bay’s hosting company.

Indeed, that would be quite unbelievable.

Source: Warner Music Director Profited From Piracy

Others, such as Kazaa, eDonkey, iMesh and Bearshare, enjoyed great success but were slaughtered and/or reanimated into friendly forms by the international recording industry. But it was the 2005 United States Supreme Court decision in MGM Studios v Grokster which drew an important line in the sand.

That hugely complicated case underlined an important message – don’t create a product and promote it for infringing uses.

As we’ve seen from the recent dismantling of LimeWire, that lesson still eludes some and almost unbelievably it’s still being repeated today. What am I talking about? File-sharing client marketing.

A few weeks ago TorrentFreak learned that Cydia, the alternative market place for iPhone apps, were taking a harsh line on file-sharing software. We aren’t talking about an Apple-style blanket-ban on anything with the word ‘torrent’ in the title, but what appears to be an analysis by Saurik, Cydia’s owner, of what might be deemed illegal.

We know of at least two developers who have had their quite decent apps kicked out by Cydia, a victim of their apparent “one strike and you’re out” policy. But it appears that the apps were excluded not due to their functionality, but because of marketing missteps.

Paraphrasing one developer’s marketing blurb, the suggestion was that the app was great, not only for legal downloads but for “not so legal” downloads too. It’s just a few words but they clearly make all the difference.

Another coder, who made a suite of what look like perfectly nice apps for accessing various torrent sites and managing downloads, threw in some beautiful screen shots of the software in action. Whether those TV show download listings in among the nondescript stuff were intentional or not is impossible to say. Nevertheless, the outcome wasn’t good.

As is often the case, TorrentFreak recently received an email from a company promoting a new Mac torrent client, which came with a nice little promotional video. The video demo showed the shiny new client in action – downloading a discography of a very famous mainstream label singer. This, from a company who has clearly invested quite a lot of cash into their products. Why take this kind of chance?

Then just a couple of weeks ago an informative news article was published which mentioned the growing use of mobile apps. In it a respectable developer admitted that his app was mainly used for downloading TV shows. If that app goes huge in the future, what kind of damage would a confession like that cause? Following in the steps of LimeWire is great for a while but it ultimately ends in years of sleepless nights and $100m+ in damages.

There are some brilliant minds out there, coding some awesome applications and while some of them will wither and die, others will go on to greatness and bring the creator the satisfaction dreamed about during those long nights with just a screen, a bucket of coffee and a table lamp for company.

OK, not all software creators or indeed site operators care about or even need to abide by US laws due to their mindset or geographic location. They have chosen their path, are comfortable with it, and are doing what they do best. They are aware that their troubles will grow in parallel with their successes and they will morph, outmaneuver, hide or give the finger to their adversaries – that is their prerogative.

But for those who are positively out of the shadows and actively courting the US and increasingly the European markets, behaving today in a way in which one wouldn’t mind being judged by tomorrow might prove incredibly valuable. And make no mistake, that judgment standard is getting tougher every year.

That said, the good news for software devs is that maintaining respectability (for want of a better word) doesn’t devalue a product in any way, indeed it adds value. And it costs absolutely nothing, just a pause for thought.

Source: So You Code File-Sharing Apps? Get Smart With Your Marketing

The evidence further showed that LimeWire marketed its application to Napster users and that its business model depended on mass copyright infringements.

Following the injunction LimeWire immediately disabled its file-sharing client, but the trouble for the company was far from over. Record labels and music publishers kept chasing LimeWire demanding compensation for the losses they claim the file-sharing service operator had caused.

The labels calculated that the company behind the popular file-sharing client owed them up to a billion dollars, and they filed a claim to collect it.

Last week, a New York federal jury trial started, but before this came to an end the two parties agreed to settle the case for $105 million. The RIAA brought in 9,715 tracks as evidence, which means that the amount translates to $10,808 per track instead of the maximum $150,000 the jury could have awarded.

The labels are obviously pleased with the outcome of the case. They’ve successfully argued that LimeWire caused both them and their artists significant losses.

“The resolution of this case is another milestone in the continuing evolution of online music to a legitimate marketplace that appropriately rewards creators,” RIAA Chairman Mitch Bainwol said in a comment.

Too bad, however, that the RIAA isn’t sharing any of the ‘damages’ with the artists, to reward them. Despite presenting thousands of artists as victims in the case, none of them are expected to see any of the settlement money in their bank accounts anytime soon.

RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy previously told TorrentFreak that the ‘damages’ accrued from piracy-related lawsuits will not go to any of the artists, but towards funding more anti-piracy campaigns. “Any funds recouped are re-invested into our ongoing education and anti-piracy programs,” he said.

Thus far the RIAA has not announced officially how the LimeWire settlement will be spent, but we don’t expect them to steer away from their previous course. This makes today’s decision on compensation a victory for the major labels, but certainly not one for musicians.

Source: LimeWire Pays RIAA $105 Million, Artists Get Nothing

In the lawsuit against CBS Interactive, CNET Networks and LimeWire, David is joined by a collection of rappers and R&B groups including 2 Live Crew, Crucial Conflict and Pretty Ricky. They accuse CNET’s Download.com and the other defendants of several copyright infringement related offenses and are demanding compensation for damages suffered..

“The CBS Defendants have been the main distributor of LimeWire software and have promoted this and other P2P systems in order to directly profit from wide-scale copyright infringement. Internet users have downloaded more then [sic] 220 million copies from Defendants’ website, found at Download.com, since 2008,” the complaint starts.

In addition to LimeWire, the complaint notes that Download.com is still promoting various other P2P-applications which the majority of people use to infringe copyrights. By promoting this software in return for money and by showing users how to download, the CBS defendants are willingly contributing to copyright infringement, the plaintiffs claim.

“The CBS Defendants received massive amounts of revenue from P2P providers on a ‘pay per download’ basis and also from advertising revenues generated by advertisements placed on the download screen for P2P software,” the complaint argues.

“The CBS Defendants’ business model has been so dependent upon P2P and file-sharing that entire pages of Download.com are designed to specifically list and categorize these software offerings.”

“In fact, the CBS Defendants were well aware that these software applications were used overwhelmingly to infringe when they first partnered with LimeWire and other P2P providers, but ignored it in exchange for a steady stream of income.”

The complaint goes on to explain how CNET’s paid editors promoted various P2P-applications, and how they alerted the readers to tools that could circumvent DRM. According to the complaint the entire Download.com system was used to maximize the downloads of various P2P applications, and thus potential copyright infringements.

The above leads the plaintiffs to conclude that CBS and CNET are guilty of inducing copyright infringement, contributory copyright infringement and vicarious copyright infringement. In addition to receiving compensation they want the defendants to stop promoting P2P software.

“Defendants must compensate Plaintiffs for the damages they caused and be ordered to cease future infringement,” Alki David and his crew demand.

Without commenting on the claims in detail, it has to be noted that the Plaintiffs take a huge leap of faith with their allegations. The P2P software (e.g. FrostWire) they want Download.com and others to stop distributing is by no means illegal. LimeWire was found guilty last year not because of the technology it developed, but because it explicitly encouraged infringements.

That said, it seems that the parties in this case are hardly saints when it comes to honoring copyrights. Aside from the FilmOn founder who’s been sued for copyright infringement, several of the artists among the plaintiffs have also been involved in copyright infringement lawsuits, up to the Supreme Court in the case of 2 Live Crew.

In a comment to THR, CBS characterized the lawsuit as a “desperate attempt to distract copyright holders like us from continuing our rightful claims.”

“CBS and a host of other media companies were awarded a court ordered injunction against one of Alki David’s companies last year with respect to that company’s improper use of copyrighted content. His lawsuit against CBS affiliates is riddled with inaccuracies, and we are confident that we will prevail, just as we did in the injunction hearing involving his company,” the company added.

Time will tell who’s right and who’s wrong.

Source: CNET’s Download.com Sued over LimeWire Downloads

At the time we doubted that LimeWire’s demise would have much of an impact on the volume of music piracy, but according to research from the NPD Group we were wrong.

Although there are plenty of alternatives to LimeWire, NPD found that the number of people who downloaded music illicitly using P2P in the last quarter of 2010 has decreased by 43% compared to the year before. The researchers conclude that much of the decline is due to the unavailability of LimeWire, which ceased its operations just a few weeks into quarter 4 of last year.

This data comes from an extensive survey of 5,549 Americans, and translated into the entire population it means that the number of music pirates has decreased from 28 million to 16 million in just a year.

Looking at the market share of the various P2P applications, LimeWire was still in the lead with 32 percent of the music pirates indicating that they’d used it in the few weeks that it was still available. This is down from 56 percent in the year before.

As expected, LimeWire’s shutdown also resulted in a market share up-tick for various other P2P applications. FrostWire appears to be the greatest beneficiary, as it saw a relative increase from 10 percent to 21 percent.

The most popular BitTorrent client uTorrent saw its market share growing from 8 to 12 percent. However, since the total number of music pirates declined so much this actually means that in absolute numbers less people indicated that they used uTorrent to pirate music compared to a year ago.

Taken together NPD’s research suggests that the percentage of music pirates in the U.S. population has fallen drastically, from 16 percent to 9 percent in a year. But the big question is what effect this has had on music industry revenues. Although we don’t necessarily have much faith in the validity of the survey, the RIAA must be delighted with the findings – or are they?

We assume that when they look at their revenues during the last quarter of 2010, the big music labels will fail to see any significant change in their revenues. Why? Well, because music piracy might not have much of an effect on music sales in the first place. But I guess if they can’t use it to their benefit, the RIAA will simply ignore what might be the biggest piracy decline in history.

Source: US Music Piracy Plunges After LimeWire Shutdown

One of these lawsuits has now been concluded with EMI, Warner Bros., Universal, Sony and several other major music publishers reaching a settlement agreement with LimeWire. No details on the deal have been released, except the court filing which note that both parties “shall each bear its own costs of suit, including attorney’s fees.”

While this settlement brings to an end a lawsuit started in June last year when LimeWire was still operational, by no means does it mark the end of LimeWire’s legal troubles. Due to the complex copyright pyramid the music industry has set up, many of the same companies are still fighting the company in a separate case as copyright owners (vs. publishers).

This case is where the permanent injunction which forced LimeWire to shut down was issued last October. According to the injunction, LimeWire “intentionally encouraged infringement” by LimeWire users, its software was used “overwhelmingly for infringement” and the company knew about the “substantial infringement being committed” by its users.

The evidence further showed that LimeWire marketed its application to Napster users and that its business model depended on mass copyright infringements.

The injunction was the result of a lengthy and ongoing litigation process which dates back to 2006, and soon after it was awarded the record labels filed a claim to recoup damages said to have been caused by LimeWire. The labels calculated that the company behind the popular file-sharing client owes them up to a billion dollars.

The case dragged on and in recent weeks dozens of documents were submitted to the court in a noteworthy side-battle. To get to the bottom of how the music industry sets up licensing deals with other Internet companies, LimeWire subpoenaed internal emails from Apple, Amazon, Yahoo, Google, MySpace and others.

Thus far a quarter million pages of emails have been collected, leading LimeWire to draw some interesting conclusions. Among other things, they found that unauthorized downloads actually boosted the revenue of music labels, and that their income took a dive when LimeWire shut down.

Both parties continue their dispute in the coming weeks and a trial has been scheduled for May, in which the damages claim will be assessed.

While the record labels are hoping to catch a big score against LimeWire, many ex-users of its file-sharing client have moved on to one of the many LimeWire alternatives, or the resurrected pirate edition.

Source: LimeWire Settles With Record Labels, Still Faces $1 Billion Claim

In a letter signed by 17 music groups featuring everyone from the RIAA to the Church Music Publishers Association, Shah is told in no uncertain terms that his employees have been very naughty indeed.

“We write to express our deep disappointment with your decision to publish Chloe Albanesius’ October 27 article, ‘LimeWire is Dead: What are the Alternatives?‘ as well as Sarah Jacobsson Purewal’s November 9, 2010 article ‘LimeWire is Quietly Resurrected: It’s Baaack!’,” begins the letter.

“Both articles are nothing more than a roadmap for continued music piracy. The disclaimer in the first, ‘PC Magazine does not condone the download of copyrighted or illegal material,’ rings hollow to say the least.”

The first article, which lists LimeWire alternatives, led those sending the letter to accuse PC Mag of “…slyly encouraging people to steal more music and place at risk the tens of thousands of music industry jobs – including singers, songwriters, musicians and the technical professionals who put it all together.”

However, it seems that the second article, LimeWire Is Quietly Resurrected: It’s Baaack!, caused the most trouble for PC Mag. The article reported entirely on an article published first here on TorrentFreak titled LimeWire Resurrected By Secret Dev Team.

However, while we chose not to link to the software out of concerns of being labelled a disciple of Lucifer, according to the music industry letter, PC Mag apparently had no such qualms.

“Even worse is offering a direct link to a ‘resurrected’ Limewire,” states the letter to Ziff Davis’ Vivek Shah, which goes on to quote the writer of the piece, Sarah Jacobsson Purewal.

“I went ahead and downloaded LimeWire Pirate Edition for *ahem* research purposes, and can report that it appears to be working very smoothly,” it reports Purewal as saying while going on to complain loudly that she included a link to the rogue LimeWire software.

However, there’s a bit of a problem. While PC Mag did indeed publish the first article, they weren’t the architects of the second – Sarah Jacobsson Purewal writes for IDG’s PC World.

Nevertheless, Ziff Davis and PC Mag get even more of a dressing down in the final paragraphs.

“We would hope that your sense of decency and the realization that even PC Magazine has a responsibility to the rule of law, would have informed your editorial decision in this matter,” the letter continues.

“We suspect you’d feel differently about this issue if, like the music industry, you’d had to let go more than half of the talented writers and journalists who create your magazine because of uncontrolled piracy of their work. Unfortunately, it is clear that the rule of law was an afterthought.”

IDG must be breathing a sigh of relief tonight at escaping the wrath of the industry, but maybe they’ll get their admonishment tomorrow.

In the meantime, we seem to have escaped the naughty chair for writing the original article which just goes to show – if you’re going to annoy the music industry, it’s best to do it via proxy.

Source: PC Mag Admonished By Music Biz For Encouraging Piracy

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.”

Source: LimeWire Pirate Edition Site Nuked By “Cheap and Dishonest” RIAA Action

In this decade, Noah Bennet from Heroes wasn’t alone in returning to life after being shot since Nathan Petrelli also cheated the inevitability of the bullet with his own miraculous recovery. Going a little further back, anyone old enough to remember the 80s will recall that Bobby Ewing of Dallas evaded a permanent underground future by the fortuitous inclusion of a last-minute dream sequence.

Some characters that refuse to stay dead aren’t always friendly though. How many times has Friday the 13th’s Jason met his maker? What’s the body count if one adds together the celluloid heart-stoppages of Freddy Kruger and Michael Myers from Halloween? Was Fatal Attraction’s Glenn Close dead, or simply enjoying a relaxing bath? In any event, if it means making money, it seems that Hollywood is always happy to make evil breathe again.

That said, one monster Hollywood really hoped would stay dead after its drawn out torture and subsequent recent slaying was the hugely popular LimeWire file-sharing client. However, rather like the abuse suffered by the Black Knight in Monty Python and The Holy Grail, the sustained attack by the RIAA turned out to be a mere flesh wound.

Although alternatives are available and growing in popularity, a secret dev team remained focused on reanimating the lifeless corpse of LimeWire and like an irrepressible file-sharing zombie, the world’s favorite Gnutella client is back.

“On October 26 the remaining LimeWire developers were forced to shut down the company’s servers and modify remote settings in the filesharing client to try to harm the Gnutella network. They were then laid off,” a source told TorrentFreak.

“Shortly after, a horde of piratical monkeys climbed aboard the abandoned ship, mended its sails, polished its cannons, and released it free to the community.”

And so, LimeWire Pirate Edition (LPE) was born. Based on the LimeWire 5.6 beta that was briefly released earlier this year and then withdrawn when Lime Wire LLC lost its lawsuit, LPE is now in the wild. In many ways, it is better than the version killed by the RIAA.

“All dependencies on LimeWire LLC’s servers have been removed, all remote settings have been disabled, the Ask toolbar has been unbundled, and all features of LimeWire PRO have been activated for free,” our source explained.

“LimeWire Pirate Edition should work better than the last functioning version of LimeWire (5.5.10), and it should keep working for longer. There’s no adware or spyware: the piratical monkeys are doing this for the benefit of the community.”

Currently only available for Windows, in our tests LimeWire Pirate Edition functioned perfectly well and is already circulating on BitTorrent.

Next up, Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine and the Sinclair C5 but before anyone gets any ideas, let’s leave Kazaa where it is.

Source: LimeWire Resurrected By Secret Dev Team

In a response to the decision LimeWire made its client unusable, leaving millions of users with no other option than to find an alternative. The good news is that there are several applications and services that are ready to act as a replacement. We will discuss a few of them below.

FrostWire

FrostWire is a popular free and Open Source P2P client supporting both Gnutella and BitTorrent downloads. The application was first released in 2004 by members of the LimeWire Open Source community. FrostWire is similar to LimeWire in use and layout, and is fully compatible with iTunes. There are versions available for various operating systems including Windows, Mac, Linux and even Android.

FrostWire has always emphasized the non-infringing use of their client. In 2008, the client introduced its FrostClick service through which it promotes independent artists, which has been very successful.

MP3Rocket

MP3Rocket is another LimeWire spinoff with a very similar look and functionality. It works on Windows and Mac and the application supports both Gnutella and BitTorrent downloads.

Unlike its name suggests, MP3Rocket is not limited to finding MP3s. It is capable of downloading any file format including video files and software. In addition to downloads, MP3Rocket also has hundreds of streamable radio and TV-channels.

BitTorrent

The two applications we discussed above both support BitTorrent downloads, but like LimeWire they were rarely used for this purpose. The main reason is most likely that many of its users don’t really know where to find .torrent files. For those who want to switch over, here is a list of some decent torrent sites.

LimeWire users who want to give BitTorrent a try might also want to consider using a dedicated torrent client such as uTorrent, Vuze or Transmission.

Music/Video Streaming

Music fans who don’t mind streaming tracks in their web browser actually have a few alternatives. Grooveshark is one of the most elaborate music services. It holds more content than the average download store, supports playlists and works on various mobile phones.

For video streaming there are perhaps even more alternatives. There are literally hundreds of sites one can choose from, although we have to warn of excessive popups on most sites. A Google search for “movie streaming” should be enough to get going.

Usenet / Newsgroups

Usenet is another good alternative to download all sorts of files, but depending on the service you sign up for it can be a bit harder to figure out than the other alternatives. Also, any good Usenet service requires a paid subscription, which is the trade-off for getting one of the fastest and most anonymous download services.

Direct Download Sites / Search Engines

There are numerous sites that search open web directories or allow saving of otherwise streaming music. BeeMP3, DilanDau, MRTZCMP3, MP3Hunting and various Mulve-style alternatives such as the PirateApp and Firefox plugin Vkontakte DL are just a few of those available.

More More More

The alternatives discussed above are really just the tip of the iceberg. There are dozens, if not hundreds of alternatives to LimeWire that can be used for sharing and finding files. This includes some of the older LimeWire versions that are reportedly still working. Other notable P2P applications are Soulseek, Ares and eMule. And then there is Direct Connect, Advanced Direct Connect and so on.

It never ends.

Source: Dozens of Great Alternatives To LimeWire

The record labels argued that the Gnutella-based download client might have caused billions of dollars in lost revenue and that it’s therefore one of the largest threats to the music industry’s revenue. Today, RIAA’s request was granted by a federal judge.

According to the injunction, Limewire “intentionally encouraged infringement” by Limewire users, it is used “overwhelmingly for infringement” and it knew about the “substantial infringement being committed” by its users.

The evidence further showed that Limewire marketed its application to Napster users and that its business model depends on mass copyright infringements.

The New York District Court demanded that Limewire shuts down its entire operation, including all searches and uploading and downloading that occurs through the client. LimeWire users who start up their client will immediately notice that it is no longer usable.

The outcome of this case could potentially change the file-sharing landscape for good. Despite BitTorrent being the leading file-sharing protocol for several years already, LimeWire is most likely the most installed P2P application on the market. In 2008 LimeWire was the most installed P2P application with an impressive market-share of 37%, compared to 14% for runner-up uTorrent.

Now the RIAA has scored a victory in court against LimeWire, millions of people will have to seek an alternative download client, which might mean a significant boost in user numbers for some of the major BitTorrent applications.

On the other hand, software that’s similar to LimeWire might be affected negatively by today’s judgment. In the injunction software such as FrostWire and MP3Rocket, but also BitTorrent clients including uTorrent, Vuze and Transmission are described as “similar software”. Could one of these become the next target?

In a response to TorrentFreak, the RIAA didn’t want to speculate on future targets. Instead, we were told: “The court has now signed an injunction that will start to unwind the massive piracy machine that Limewire and Gorton used to enrich themselves immensely.”

“In January, the court will conduct a trial to determine the appropriate level of damages necessary to compensate the record companies for the billions and billions of illegal downloads that occurred through the Limewire system,” the RIAA added.

Although today’s decision is the end of Limewire as we know it, the brand is expected to reappear soon with a “non-infringing” service.

Here are some LimeWire alternatives and replacements that can come in handy.

Source: LimeWire Shuts Down After Losing Court Battle With The RIAA

Last month, a US Court ruled that the Lime Group, the company behind Limewire, was liable for the copyright infringements committed by its users. Two weeks later the Lime Group asked the court to reconsider this judgment. This request was followed by one from the RIAA, asking the court to shut down Limewire via a permanent injunction.

The RIAA argues that Limewire’s operation has to be stopped immediately, to avoid it doing any more harm to the music industry in the future. Interestingly enough, very little argumentation or evidence is given for any real losses suffered by the record labels.

“It is patently obvious that the rampant illegal conduct that Lime Wire intentionally induced, and for which it has been adjudged liable, will continue uninterrupted day after day unless and until the Court issues an injunction to rein in this massive infringing operation,” RIAA’s lawyers wrote to the Court.

“Every day that Lime Wire’s conduct continues unabated guarantees harm to Plaintiffs that money damages cannot and will not compensate,” RIAA’s legal team continues. “The scope of the infringements that Lime Wire induced – and that continue to this day – boggles the mind.

The RIAA is right in saying that Limewire users have committed, and are committing many millions of infringements, but there is very little evidence for the massive damage that this has cost. Thus far, a real assessment of the claimed losses has been lacking in most file-sharing related legal cases.

“It does not require sophisticated mathematics to calculate that the likely damage award in this case will run into the hundreds of millions, if not the billions of dollars,” the RIAA argues. However, one of the few academic papers (pdf) that looked at the relationship between actual downloads and lost sales to the music industry has found that there’s no direct correlation.

With that said, the outcome of this case could potentially change the file-sharing landscape for good. Despite BitTorrent being the leading file-sharing protocol for several years already, Limewire is most likely the most installed P2P application on the market. In 2008 LimeWire was the most installed P2P application with an impressive market-share of 37%, compared to 14% for runner-up uTorrent.

If the RIAA score a victory in court against Limewire, hundreds or millions of people will have to seek an alternative download client, which might mean a significant boost in user numbers for some of the major BitTorrent applications.

Source: RIAA Wants Court To Shut Down Limewire

Despite the good reviews from LimeWire users on the latest release, the management at Facebook was not amused. After having blocked The Pirate Bay’s “Share on Facebook” feature, the Internet’s largest social network has now threatened LimeWire that it will share the same fate.

Jason Herskowit, Vice President Product Management at LimeWire told TorrentFreak that Facebook has requested a number of changes to LimeWire’s Facebook integration after they introduced the new feature. LimeWire quickly complied with these requests, but that was not good enough.

“Unfortunately, this week we were contacted again. This time not with a change request, but with a notice that they were going to disable the feature,” Jason explained. “Rather than leave the users with a broken LimeWire, we decided to disable the feature before they did so. As an avid user of both Facebook and LimeWire myself, I am as disappointed by this as anyone.”

“It is unfortunate for us all, particularly considering that LimeWire and Facebook share the common vision of being ‘a place to connect and share’. We hope to find a way to work with Facebook to re-enable the features that you guys continue to ask for and we sincerely apologize for having to remove this feature in the near-term,” Jason added.

Facebook has yet to issue a statement on the LimeWire ban but it is likely that the company doesn’t want to be associated with file-sharing applications or sites, even though they are perfectly legal.

After The Pirate Bay was blocked a Facebook spokesperson told TorrentFreak: “Facebook respects copyrights and our Terms of Service prohibits placement of ‘Share on Facebook’ links on sites that contain any content that is infringing,” and it seems that they will do the same to applications that can possibly be used to download copyrighted content.

Facebook was asked for a comment but they have yet to respond. The good news for BitTorrent users is that the share feature on The Pirate Bay is working again, as the site’s operators have implemented a workaround that lifted the block.

Feel free to share this article on Facebook while you still can.

Source: Facebook Bans LimeWire’s Share Feature

Although we can safely say that most LimeWire users don’t use the application just for its BitTorrent support, LimeWire could not ignore the popularity of BitTorrent and had no other option than to implement the most used file-sharing protocol back in 2006.

Up until today, LimeWire’s BitTorrent functionality has been rather limited, especially compared to the full-featured BitTorrent clients such as uTorrent, Transmission and Vuze. However, this is all about to change according to the LimeWire team.

LimeWire’s lead developer Sam Berlin told TorrentFreak that they’ve done a complete overhaul of their BitTorrent implementation. The newest release is already available in Beta and now uses Arvid Norberg’s Libtorrent under the hood, which is a significant improvement.

With the implementation of Libtorrent – which is also used by BitTorrent clients such as Deluge, Halite and Miro – Limewire now supports Mainline DHT, UDP tracking, IPv6, HTTP seeding, local peer discovery and uTorrent’s peer exchange

With Libtorrent LimeWire definitely made a step in the right direction that will benefit those who use the application to occasionally download torrents. True to LimeWire’s “ease of use” standards there are very few BitTorrent options to configure, meaning that most new features are simply enabled and can’t be turned off.

Sam Berlin told TorrentFreak that the LimeWire team has no idea how many of their users use the application to download torrents. In a BitTorrent client survey we conducted of 137,797 peers across various swarms only 43 of them were using LimeWire. They must be delighted at the news.

Source: Limewire Gets More Serious About BitTorrent

The record labels argue that the Vuze and the others are knowingly distributing software with the purpose to permit unauthorized access to copyrighted works. In essence they are saying that everything, or every application which allows a user to share files, will be indeed used for illegal purposes. In contrast, in the US, companies that don’t encourage their users to commit copyright infringement with their applications, are not acting illegally.

SPPF had already sued the various companies and organizations last year, but until now it has been unclear whether the US based companies behind the applications could be prosecuted under French law. A French court has now ruled that this is indeed possible, which means that they can proceed to court.

Recent French legislation which inspired the labels to go after the P2P companies, suggests that all P2P applications must have a feature to block the transfer of unauthorized copyright works. The clients that are sued by SPPF obviously don’t have such a feature. In fact, it is questionable whether it would be technically possible to develop such a filter. Nevertheless, SPPF demands it, and is claiming millions of dollars in damages for lost revenue.

Vuze CEO Gilles BianRosa stated in a response to TorrentFreak, “While we appreciate the intent of the new French law, we believe SPPF’s complaint is misguided. Vuze is dedicated to the distribution of legitimate content using new technology. In that sense, our interests are aligned with the interests of all content owners, including SPPF’s members, against piracy.”

“We are disappointed that SPPF has taken this approach, given that our business is dedicated to the distribution of legitimate content,” BianRosa added. “SPPF’s claims against Vuze are simply wrong. The Vuze business complies fully with both French and American law. The recent ruling of the French Court was solely on a jurisdictional issue, not on any merits, and we believe it is in error.”

Interestingly, SPPF is also going after Sourceforge, the open source development website, because it hosts the P2P application Shareaza. Putting aside the discussion on the responsibilities of application developers for their users activities, the decision to go after SourceForge for hosting a application that can potentially infringe, is stretching credibility beyond all bounds”

Meanwhile, Vuze has appealed the decision. Separately, the company is suing SPPF for defamation based upon several false and harmful statements made by SPPF about Vuze. A different French Court has denied SPPF’s attempt to derail those claims recently , and is allowing the defamation lawsuit to proceed.

If SPPF succeeds in their case against organizations running the four P2P applications, FTP software and Internet browsers might be next, if they don’t go after Ubuntu and other operating systems first. Perhaps it is even better to shut down the Internet entirely.

Source: Record Labels to Sue Vuze, Limewire and SourceForge

Earlier this year, the company opened their official music store, which they have expanded ever since. Today LimeWire takes another step forward, as they announce the largest distribution deal since the store launched. They teamed up with “The Orchard“, which distributes more than 1.2 million songs, mostly from Indie labels.

Greg Scholl, President and CEO of The Orchard, said in a response to the announcement: “We’re pleased to support the LimeWire store, a retail offering that protects copyrights while fairly compensating artists and labels. This exciting entrant to digital retail offers us a unique opportunity to connect our clients with an online audience of potentially millions of new customers.”

Tracks from the Limewire store are 256kbps DRM-free MP3s and cost $0.99 each. However, there are significant savings to be had with some of the subscription plans. The ‘Platinum’ plan offers the best price, offering 75 ‘Download Credits’ for $19.99 a month, which works out to $0.27 per track. ‘Download Credits’, which is more reasonable that most other stores.

The LimeWire store is linked to the filesharing client (hmmm), meaning that LimeWire users will see “buy now” offer in the search results. This does of course drive a lot of new customers to the store, but it’s also an interesting marketing opportunity for record labels. Still, most of the big labels are hesitant to partner with the store.

The LimeWire team has also added some new features such as radio playlist integration. Users can browse the playlists of radio stations in their area, with direct links to buy the songs. “We’re focused on features that will allow people to discover new music as well as interact on a different level with their existing favorites,” Jason Pelzer, the LimeWire store Technical Director told TorrentFreak.

Playlist integration.

“LimeWire Store development has been running at full speed to provide a number of exciting new features, and we are enjoying the opportunity to improve our user community’s experience via the feedback they’ve provided,” he added.

One of the major downsides of the Limewire store is that it’s only available to US customers, due to licensing issues. In a way it’s also strange that the download store named after and developed by a P2P company, doesn’t use P2P to distribute their content. Other than that, the service looks like a good alternative to most of the music stores that are currently out there.

Source: LimeWire Music Store Adds 1.2 Million Tracks

P2P marketing is a win-win situation according to MediaDefender, both advertisers and filesharers will benefit. It gives the advertiser “access to passionate fans of any choosing” and filesharers “…get what they want… free content with unique and compelling offerings that fit their personal tastes.”

But wait a second, what a strange world we are living in. A few months ago, Jammie Thomas lost her court case, and was ordered to pay the RIAA hundreds and thousands of dollars because she shared a few songs, and now the same record labels use filesharing networks to distribute their branded MP3s.

Similarly, the IFPI is trying to educate kids and parents about the great dangers of filesharing, while the record companies they represent hire MediaDefender to distribute authorized content on LimeWire and other P2P networks.

So, on the one hand record labels are going after people who distribute their files online, and at the same time they spam these networks with authorized copies. Strangely enough, there is no way for the filesharer to make sure whether a file is authorized or not.

I’m not a lawyer of course, but this double standard must have some legal implications. MediaDefender is even hosting a branded copy of Kayne West’s ‘stronger’ on their own servers, and I assume they wouldn’t be infringing copyright.

Of course we asked MediaDefender to shed their light on some of these questions, but unfortunately, they did not respond to our inquiries. Probably too busy spoofing or DDoS-ing random BitTorrent trackers.

Source: MediaDefender Goes Forward with P2P Marketing

No more slow downloads, viruses, or adware/spyware required to find the files you are looking for. The Rhever application has a built in easy-to-use search engine to find what you are looking for and does not require you to troll websites looking for .torrent files.

Unfortunately for Rhever, there is no Internet ‘buzz’ around their brand, people just aren’t taking about it, which is a bit strange for such a seemingly great product. If you do a search, 95% of the stuff you’ll find are press releases – and they only appear to be designed to worry people onto their new service.

They play an awful lot on the closure of TorrentSpy in their attempts to generate fear, uncertainty, doubt – and new business for them.

The ‘launch‘ press release lays off most of the scare tactics but is still littered with strange and misleading statements. Rhever spam is posted on dozens of forums, like this one and there are also some ‘interesting’ articles and blog posts around (tagged ‘Rhever’) proclaiming the end of BitTorrent sites. Even Digg doesn’t escape Rhever spam submitted by the company itself.

Also, Rhever use the most contentious music industry statistics to ‘prove’ that other P2P networks are dangerous, and refer to the IFPI as “respected industry analysts.”

If the fear doesn’t work, maybe the comedy angle will get them some subscribers? Rhever has produced a series of (admittedly quite funny) promotional animations showing the benefits of using Rhever over existing file sharing networks. Take a look at the ‘Rhever vs LimeWire’ video below which says that Rhever has done the impossible – and completely eradicated viruses from its network. In its own words:

Each of its [Rhever's] 60,000 servers are run by an administrative team that monitors the servers for any rogue files – viruses, fake uploads and other negative features that are removed instantly

LimeWire vs Rhever

BitTorrent vs Rhever . In this video you will find the secret of the Rhever network..

So it seems Rhever is selling access to good old Usenet and advises its subscribers to use NZB files to get their material, recommending its own (currently non-operational) site to get them – NZB.net.

Considering that Rhever’s strategy is to worry people about the legality of their chosen method of sharing files so much that they sign up, they’re quite cavalier about their own legal position. NZB sites in the US don’t have a great lifespan and offering a full package with Usenet seems very brave.

Finally, here is the KaZaA vs Rhever video:

Rhever is keen to play on the adware bundled with KaZaA, and that proves interesting when armed with WHOIS.

Rhever.com and NZB.net are both owned by a company called JMH Media. JMH Media are the current owners of the MySpaceBar.com domain, which was previously connected to the Scam.MySpaceBar malware. Unsurprisingly, McAfee doesn’t like it at all.

I’m not exactly inspired with confidence to try this Rhever but hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained! Time to sign up. Unfortunately, no matter what I put in I get errors, a point not lost on the solitary poster on the Rhever forums:

No mention of prices anywhere. No contract information. No proper terms or conditions. No company information. No privacy statement. No contact information. No postal address.

There is however, a link to the Rhever client, named ‘setup.exe’…..

Maybe Rhever’s fear-marketing has got to me? Far from being scared into leaving BitTorrent, all this uncertainty means that i’m too scared to even install ‘setup.exe’ due to what might be inside it – an instinct I acquired in my days as a LimeWire/KaZaA user. I think something just backfired.

Well then, another couple of hours wasted looking for The Holy Grail, only to realize that much like the French soldiers in the movie of the same name, I already have one.

What we really need now is a talented animator to make a proper ‘BitTorrent versus Rhever’ video….

Source: Be Afraid of BitTorrent, Very, Very Afraid

It turns out that Digital Music News report is based on data which was collected by PC Pitstop. Unfortunately Digital Music News has trouble interpreting their own data. They claim in their press release that it is 36.4%, but that is the market share compared to other P2P clients. This means that on all PCs that have a P2P client installed, 36.4% installed Limewire

The actual install base of Limewire is less than 18%, still impressive, but not even close to one third of all PCs. Nevertheless, LimeWire is still the P2P application that is installed on most desktop computers. In comparison, with an install rate of more than 5% on Windows PCs worldwide, uTorrent is now by far the most popular BitTorrent client.

TorrentFreak contacted Digital Music News’s Paul Resnikoff two weeks ago about this issue and he told us: “I think you’ve definitely caught an error in our reporting. We’ll be issuing corrections on this. Thanks for the assistance.” So far, the initial reports haven’t been corrected, and this blunder is published as fact over and over again.

For those who are interested, here you can find the raw data where the report is based on.

Source: LimeWire Not as Popular as Recent Reports Suggest

The survey – carried out online and financed and operated by a trio of industry organizations, similar to their well-known US counterparts – RIAJ (music), the Japanese MPAA and ACC (software) – concluded that the number of internet users sharing authorized media climbed from 3.5 per cent in June 2006, to 9.6 per cent by September 2007, a near 180% increase.

The numbers of files downloaded increased by a large amount too. June 2006 saw an average of 194 files downloaded per user which increased to 481 by September this year. Audio files topped the download charts with 211 per user with video coming in next with 183. People downloaded an average of 43 images, 33 documents and 14 pieces of software.

The survey found that the favorite P2P sharing application in Japan is still Winny with 27 percent. LimeWire, which is very popular in the West took 18.8 per cent of the vote with WinMX sitting at 15 per cent.

BitTorrent, which is incredibly popular all over the world with tens of millions of users, ranked just 6th with 7.4 per cent.

Japan hit the file-sharing news headlines earlier this year when a bizarre virus on the Winny network attacked files and displayed strange messages.

TorrentFreak looks forward to being able to report a dramatic growth in Japanese BitTorrent users next year.

Source: Japanese File-Sharing Population Explodes

“Never work with children or animals” said WC Fields. TorrentFreak takes a chance:

TF. Hi Hannah! How old are you?

- I’m 10 in 12 days

TF. What sort of music are you listening to right now?

Sean Kingstone, Shayne Ward and High School Musical 2

TF. Where did you first get into music?

- On the music channels, on MTV.

TF. When did you get a PC?

- People had computers but I couldn’t go on them but my Dad bought me one last year. I have internet.

TF. What do you do on the internet?

- MSN, talking to friends and cousins, games and dressing-up games [dolls]

TF. When did you first start using the internet to get music?

- My cousin showed me YouTube and then LimeWire and I was like “whoa cool!”

TF. What was cool about it?

- Because you can put anything in and it will come up and you don’t actually pay for it. Well you have to pay for the internet and LimeWire comes with the internet but you have to pay for that so LimeWire isn’t really free.

TF. Ok…I see….Do you get music from anywhere else?

- My cousin gets it from BEBO. She copies it from other people’s pages and puts it on her own.

TF. Do you think it’s ok to copy the music?

- Yes it’s ok because she only does it to make her page better.

TF. So you’re sure that it’s ok to copy it? What do you think about copying?

- I suppose it’s not ok to copy but people copied it off her site so she just copies theirs. It’s like, you’re copying my t-shirt so i’m copying you on shoes.

TF. Ok, so a bit like copying school work?….Hmm….ok, let’s talk about copying on the computer again. When you started using LimeWire, did anyone ever mention that if you did certain things you might be breaking some laws?

- Why would they put it [music] on the internet and invent mp3 players if it was against the law?

TF. Confusing isn’t it?….You mentioned you like Sean Kingstone – what if I told you that Sean Kingstone’s boss might send you a letter asking for money because you shared his album on LimeWire? What would you say to him?

- W.E! [whatever!]

TF. Come on, play along with me. What would you say if he did?

- I’d say “tooooo strict!” and anyway he can’t make me do anything. He’s not the boss of me, he’s the boss of Sean Kingstone.

TF. What do you think might happen if you didn’t pay him?

- Nothing. I’m too young to be charged by the government so he can’t charge me.

TF. Would you carry on using LimeWire after he sent the letter?

- Yeah!

TF. Why?

- Because you can get good albums off there. Duh!! My CD’s don’t work in my mp3 player so LimeWire is the only way to do it. I bought High School Musical 2 on CD but it won’t go on my mp3 [player]

TF. How would you make LimeWire better?

- To speak to the person sending the music to make sure they send the right one, sometimes they send stuff that doesn’t even play.

TF. Do you know what a pirate is?

- They have parrots [effects 'arrrrr']

TF. Do you think its legal or illegal to copy a CD or DVD?

- Some men right, they sell you a DVD at the market but when you get home it doesn’t play, that’s illegal.

TF. Why is it illegal?

- Duh!! Because they tell you it works and when you get it home it’s rubbish and jumps in the middle and its a waste of money!

TF. Do you think you should be paying for stuff off LimeWire? You have to buy CD’s from the shop…

- You have to pay for CD’s because they’re actually on a disc not on the computer. My cousin, right, she uses LimeWire when she doesn’t have any money for CDs.

TF. Did you ever download anything by anybody and then go to see them?

- I got stuff by Lee Ryan and Simon Webbe and then I went to see Blue. Why don’t you ask me what my favorite hobby is?

TF. Ok, what’s your favorite hobby?

- Dancing to music, it’s fun!!

Thankyou, Hannah. That’s it! Have a nice birthday!

Source: Inside the Mind of a 9 Year Old File-Sharer

On the LimeWire Blog we read: “With several developers using Kubuntu on their development workstations we thought it was about time to officially support Ubuntu and provide packages for the growing Ubuntu user community.”

LimeWire is by far the most installed filesharing application. LimeWire is installed on 18.3% of all Windows PCs according to a report from Digital Music News, runner-up eDonkey is only installed on 3.3% of PCs. The market share of LimeWire is only expected to grow now it’s available to the ever growing Ubuntu community.

The latest LimeWire Beta for Ubuntu can be found over here.

Source: LimeWire Adds Ubuntu Support

The report is based on data supplied by BigChampagne and PC Pitstop. BigChampagne is a company that tracks online media, it also provides provides Billboard online music charts. PC Pitstop gathers data by “inspecting” the computers of users that try their free online virus / spyware scanners. The data used in this report are collected from Windows registry and table entries of 1.5 million PC’s through these online diagnostic tests performed by PC Pitstop.

The results. The percentages in the table indicate the install base of the P2P applications:

In the report we further read that the once almighty “Kazaa family” is now only installed on 1.3% PCs. Newcomers like FrostWire and Pando are included in the report for the fist time with a 0.2% and 0.3% install rate respectively.

As said before, the usability of these figures are doubtful. Here are a few concerns. First of all, install rates do not equal usage. The fact that someone installed a P2P client does not mean that they actually use it. So the report can’t say much about the popularity of a filesharing network or application. They do not make these claims, but the way the data is presented is a bit misleading, to say the least.

For example, uTorrent is by far the most used BitTorrent client. Over 50% of the peers in an average BitTorrent swarm use uTorrent. It could be that uTorrent and BitTorrent Mainline are installed on almost an equal number of PCs, but that the BitTorrent mainline client is hardly ever used. For instance, novices may start with the mainline client, but move on to better BitTorrent clients later on.

Another remarkable point is the uTorrent data collection for this report. uTorrent doesn’t install itself, and even the installer doesn’t use the Windows registry. So how did they come up with these statistics on uTorrent then?

It is also funny to see mIRC in the top 10 of most installed filesharing application because it is so much more than this. Most people I know use mIRC for other purposes than sharing files.

The concerns raised here show that “power” is not always in numbers. They might have collected data from millions of users, but is this really valuable if you have no idea if they actually use the application? A survey among 10.000 users where you actually ask if, and how often they use these applications is probably more useful.

And on a final note, people who want to read the report, but don’t want to pay $195 might want to try Google’s backdoor. Doubtful statistics, doubtful security.

Source: LimeWire Most Installed P2P Application, BitTorrent Clients Runner up

The RIAA sued the Lime Group for $150,000 for each of the songs downloaded using LimeWire. CEO Mark Gorton and Greg Bildson (Chief Technology Officer) felt that the action was taken as “one part of a much larger modern conspiracy to destroy all innovation that content owners cannot control and that disrupts their historical business models”. LimeWire counter-sued the RIAA for anti-trust violations and consumer fraud.

This Tuesday, in a discussion between Digital Music News and the RIAA, some details of the drawn-out legal process with adversary LimeWire were revealed.

According to a source, LimeWire CEO Mark Gorton had anticipated the inevitable legal clash and has been preparing for it for years. With a nod towards the Kazaa case, its claimed there is no paper trail that would show LimeWire is guilty of inducement as laid out in the relevant section of the Grokster decision, detailed below.

“..one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties”

Jonathan Lamy representing the RIAA said “They respond. We respond. They respond, etc. Then discovery. These things take a long time”.

They sure do.

Source: LimeWire Defiant in Face of RIAA Pressure

I work at [an Apple service provider]. Today we saw [multiple] iTunes libraries completely corrupted; looks like the culprit was Limewire not playing well with the newest version of iTunes.

All had just updated to the new version of iTunes and all had Limewire set to automatically update their iTunes library with new songs. One [library] was not salvageable, though the other two were (after much pain and suffering).

It’s believed the tip is related to the Mac versions of the software. The situation on Windows versions is unclear.

TUAW points to two threads on the Apple support forum as a starting point for concerned users 1 2

LimeWire users with difficulties can find support on the Gnutella forum.

According to a recent NPD Group report, Limewire users took a 62 percent share of p2p music downloads in 2006, with the average user downloading 309 tracks.

Source: Limewire Breaks iTunes 7.1

Once a torrent is downloaded, Ted will automatically launch it in your default BitTorrent client, in my case, Transmission. If your BitTorrent client has the option to delete the original torrent once it has been imported, the whole process can be made very clean, with no traces or files left behind.

The simplicity of Ted is reminiscent of LimeWire, the P2P application that made downloading mp3s easier than surfing the web. The only problem is that you need to have a BitTorrent client installed. I’m guessing that the Opera browser with its built-in BitTorrent functionality would do. Ubuntu users might have it the best, since the OS comes with a version of the mainline client pre-installed.

Ted is not yet perfect, and still needs some work. Something funny I noticed was that while setting it up, it asked me whether I wanted it to start minimised in the system tray. Mac OS X doesn’t have a system tray! It’s quite obvious that Ted was originally written for Windows.

Torrent Episode Downloader (Ted) is completely free and open source, and can be downloaded from the official site.

Source: Subscribe to TV Shows with Torrent Episode Downloader

As usual, the Adobe products will only be filtered out if the user has chosen to block copyrighted material during installation by checking the ‘Enable Content Filtering’ option.

According to the company, such deals are being signed in hope that fewer consumers will be sued for using the program. They say this is “a significant step toward a positive relationship with software producers and means a safer peer-to-peer process for LimeWire users.”

The company has clearly been trying to go legit, but at the same time not charge users for anything but the Pro version. This became apparent when they added a pop-up message that notified users that a license for the song/file they were downloading could not be found and asked them if they were sure they wanted to download it anyway.

LimeWire was sued by the RIAA earlier this year after the company announced that it was planning to integrate BitTorrent support in the program. The RIAA demanded $150,000 per song “wilfully uploaded.” This did not stop them from going ahead and implementing it anyway.

Source: LimeWire to filter out Adobe products

BitTorrent download with Limewire

Zlatin, one of the Limewire developers who’s working on the BitTorrent integration said earlier: “one of the advantages is that [Limewire users] don’t need to run a separate program to download the torrent and can manage their downloads in a consistent and unified manner from a single place”. He added that the more experienced “power users” will probably want to stick with their regular BitTorrent client, because these allow advanced management and the fine-tuning of various aspects of the torrent download.

The “limited” BitTorrent Configuration in Limewire

Limewire is using existing BT clients as a model for the implementation of BitTorrent. Zlatin told that they’ve snatched some clever idea’s (network-wise) from Azureus and the mainline client.

Although this first release is very basic, the plan to add more innovative features and options in the future.

Get the Beta version over here (changelog).

Source: Limewire now supports BitTorrent downloads

Slightly more than a year ago the word was going around that LimeWire, at the time download.com’s most popular commercial p2p file sharing application, was going down.

“We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by the clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties,” wrote justice David H. Souter for the US Supreme Court in the Grokster / StreamCast v MGM ruling.

Then, “Mark Gorton [left], the chief executive of the Lime Group … said he was likely to stop distributing LimeWire in reaction to the ruling,” said The New York Times. “He said it appeared too difficult to meet the implied standard for inducement. The court, Mr. Gorton said, has ‘handed a tool to judges that they can declare inducement whenever they want to’.”

LimeWire’s answer was what amounted to DRM – a copyright filter – but Warner Music, Vivendi Universal, EMI and Sony BMG have, in their ongoing assault on the internet and its users, again targeted LimeWire, together with Gorton and coo Greg Bildson. And once again “inducement” is the hook, the line and, the Big Four hope, the final sinker for LimeWire.

Meanwhile, a community driven project based on source code released by LimeWire LLC aimed to, “create and maintain a Gnutella client according to the open standards of an international community”.

The new application was, and still is, called FrostWire, written to, “keep and maintain the freedoms that LimeWire LLC may be forced to withdraw,” says the site, going on:

“LimeWire LLC has been considering an alternative path to keep them out of any legal situations they could be forced into. From what we understand, LimeWire LLC intends to implement a DRM filtering technology into their client. If LimeWire ever decides to implement this DRM technology, we will be prepared to remove it from our code and distribute the client under our own branding. However, we will continue supporting the LimeWire client development and do not wish to make fundamental or drastic changes to the LimeWire core itself.

“FrostWire will not break with LimeWire’s design philosophy. We will always do our best to maintain a strong relationship with the LimeWire Development Team. FrostWire, although very much like LimeWire, will never offer a paid version or a subscription service for the download or use of the FrostWire application. FrostWire is a not-for-profit project. We will never bundle our software with any type of adware, spyware, malware or collect any personal or private data. FrostWire will always remain free as in both price and freedom.”

However, LimeWire is still under the corporate gun and, “Despite numerous efforts to engage LimeWire, the site’s corporate owners have shown insufficient interest in developing a legal business model that adequately respects copyrights,” says the Big Four’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America),” according to Billboard. “While other services have come productively to the table, LimeWire has sat back and continued to reap profits on the backs of the music community. That is unfortunate and has left us no choice but to file a lawsuit to protect the rights and livelihoods of artists, songwriters and record label employees, as well as those companies building legitimate businesses based on music.”

The labels want an injunction and damages of at least $30,000 for every infringement of every recording and at least $150,000 for every willful infringement if each recording, says the story, adding:

“Last week Sharman Networks and others involved with P2P network Kazaa settled with the labels for $115 million and agreed to go legit. A similar deal was struck last year with Grokster.”

Sharman has, of course, been striving for years to reach an agreement with elements of the corporate entertaiment industry and in our humble opinion, the actual amount handed over is unlikely to be $115 million, or anywhere near it, and might in reality be regarded as an admission fee for the cartel good ‘ole boys klub.

p2pnet

Source: LimeWire Sued by the RIAA

Starting in the next beta series, LimeWire will feature BitTorrent integration and a custom DHT. Keep a look out for what’s next!

Interesting…

Source: Limewire To Include BitTorrent Support