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.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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….

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

“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!

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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).

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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

Interesting…

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.