LimeWire Works to Block Unlicensed Material

[SlyckTom]

The current version of LimeWire is 4.9.30. As of this version, no impediments exist that disallows the free sharing of information. The occassional nag screen may pop up once and a while, however this is little more than a mere nuisance for the average user. If the occassional nag screen is truly a bother, there are plenty of other Gnutella clients to choose from.

However, LimeWire has become and remains to this day one of the premier Gnutella clients. Its population is often situated at 2 million plus simultaneous users - easily outstripping the peak populations of Napster and WinMX. Its large resource of mainstream and non-mainstream music has made this a client of choice for new comers and veteran file-traders alike.

While things may seem rosy, it appears this constant is about to change.

On June 26, 2005, the United States Supreme Court remanded the MGM vs. Grokster lawsuit back to the lower courts. In a 9-0 ruling, the court stated "We hold that 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."

This opinion, written by Justice David H. Souter has caused great confusion and uncertainty in the P2P development community. The confusion raised has led to various results, such as BearShare halting development, while Neo-Modus has completely vanished. It also led to a disturbing message from LimeWire CEO Mark Gorton.

From the <a href=http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/technology/28peer.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5090&en=41f5ea71b5f92739&ex=1277611200&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss target=_blank>New York Times</a>:

"Mark Gorton, the chief executive of the Lime Group, a brokerage firm that makes LimeWire, a file-sharing alternative to Grokster, said he was likely to stop distributing LimeWire in reaction to the ruling. He said it appeared too difficult to meet the implied standard for inducement."

"Some people are saying that as long as I don't actively induce infringement, I'm O.K.," he said. "I don't think it will work out that way."

The court, Mr. Gorton said, has "handed a tool to judges that they can declare inducement whenever they want to."

However time passed and this seemingly imminent decree never came to fruition. LimeWire development plodded on, yet the LimeWire staff remained <a href=http://p2pnet.net/story/5721 target=_blank>silent</a> on much of the behind the scenes activity.

Then, on September 13, 2005, the RIAA sent several letters to various P2P developers. The letter, which LimeWire is believed to have been a recipient of, demands that P2P developers prevent their users from infringing on copyrights or face litigation. It now appears that LimeWire might bow to this demand.

Approximately 3 to 5 days ago, LimeWire developers began working on two new branches, <a href=http://www.limewire.org/fisheye/viewrep/~br=cc_reverify_interval-branch/limecvs target=_blank>cc_reverify_interval-branch</a> and <a href=http://www.limewire.org/fisheye/viewrep/~br=cc-publish-branch/limecvs target=_blank>cc-publish-branch</a>. The code in the first branch works to verify that every file shared has a license. If this is not the case, the file will not be shared. The second branch is for publishing one's own work without a license. According to the release notes, individuals can attach a Creative Commons license if the work is either their own or have permission to distribute the work.

If an individual shares an unlicensed MP3 file, the LimeWire client will display the following message and prevent its distribution:

"LimeWire can't determine if one or more files have been published under a suitable license. These files will not be shared."

According to a LimeWire beta tester who informed Slyck of this news, this feature is nearing completion. Once completed, developers will simply wait for the signal to integrate these branches with the main branch, providing Mark Gorton, CEO of LimeWire, decides to go through with this.

The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) stated the US Supreme Court ruling would have a chilling effect on technological development. This certainly appears true for commercial development; however LimeWire’s saving grace is its open source nature. LimeWire may soon block the trading of unlicensed files, but LimeWire variants will continue to exist.

The recent court ruling puts LimeWire in an unfortunate situation. The Supreme Court ruled those who “actively induce” copyright infringement can be held liable. LimeWire never “actively induced” anyone – as it was always more of a research and development client than anything else. To chill a research client such as LimeWire may help expose the RIAA’s seemingly unfettered access to taunt and bully P2P developers into submission.

LimeWire did not respond to requests for comment on this situation.

[irish]

Ominous sounds are ringing in my head. I need to test this out.

[zim]

so limewire will soon be (more) useless...


not a good trend

[Wolffi]

In comes the p2p saviour, open source. They can take one variant down, but some code tinkerer will continue to build on what had already been done.

[no_dammagE]

f00000000000000000000000000000000rk noooooooooooooow !

[Psycho Ced]

I think the key is in the open source aspect, if someone takes their source code and removes this...it is not limewires fualt.

[SlyckTom]

I've always held LimeWire in high regard. The fact this is so obvious in their source is admirable...they could have closed the source long ago but chose not to.

[Charles]

First fork will be there http://www.frostwire.com

The LimeWire source is admirable, easy to read and good comments. I really hope the open sourcers of LW all around the world continue to submit patches to keep the project mainstream even if the core is most popular as a fork.

Yes, open source is the key.

[scubascythan]

Never thought limewire was any good anyways. All this will do once users realize this is move on to another client that doesn't do this, shareaza, bearshare, etc. A move that will obviously cripple limewire's marketshare...

[no_dammagE]

I see it coming: LimeWire - the bastard child of Gnutella ^^

thank you Charles, I downloaded the snapshot, too. [I don't want to throw the filters out of the code if I just can get a snapshot w/o any ]

Maybe I'll fork it now ... as soon as eclipse cool amd64 port will actually work on amd64

Actually I didn't just because I HATE NIO - it has the worst docs and API since the KP6-Assembler ever. Not that I state, the KP6-ASM ever had an API. Just imagine: eax a,e accelerator: 1, register: 2, flags: 3. Nothing more (I read the docs over 10 years ago and don't remember them correctly, but every function they described was nothing more than that)

Code: Select all

java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: /home/dima2001/eclipse/configuration/org.eclipse.osgi/bundles/37/1/.cp/libswt-pi-gtk-3138.so: /home/dima2001/eclipse/configuration/org.eclipse.osgi/bundles/37/1/.cp/libswt-pi-gtk-3138.so:
...


And by the way, I won't wonder if new builds will be released under a different licence not allowing any forks (just like MS Rotor is released under).

[Charles]

LW will remain GPL simply because many patches were integrated from open source devs and those were GPL. There are also many GPL patches waiting to be merged in LW core. If you get mainline of CVS now, you won't get it with the CC branches. That's what I use now. If you plan make a fork, keep slyck readers in the know no_dammagE

[SlyckScratch]

"I'm taking my work back underground......to stop it falling into the wrong hands"
(Intro - Music for the Jilted Generation - The Prodigy - Sampled from 'The Lawnmower Man')

[no_dammagE]

LW will remain GPL simply because many patches were integrated from open source devs and those were GPL. There are also many GPL patches waiting to be merged in LW core. If you get mainline of CVS now, you won't get it with the CC branches. That's what I use now. If you plan make a fork, keep slyck readers in the know no_dammagE

I always wanted to make a fork to rewrite the core for an another protocol. Why? Because LimeWire already has a great core - and writing a new Gnutella client makes no sense - why reinvent the wheel if there is already one?.

In the end, just because of NIO, I'm in 25%-30%-completed core implemented in C#/Mono I miss java's strict exceptions not present in mono, but I don't even want to think of the select() emulation present with NIO...Although I will have to in two weeks - my NIO classes begin then.

PS: When I last time reviewed the code, I noticed some not very logic implementation. StringUtils' beginsWith (or similar) compared char-based. I don't know why there is such a big instruction waste if simple String.IndexOf==0 can be used (and if you need to, you can LowerCase it). Check it, at least the jar/class file will be smaller

[tm,]

I wonder if Ares might be planning something similar? If so, open-sourcing was the first logical step.

At least since Limewire open-sourced a long time ago, no one can accuse them of doing it simply to hit the RIAA with a parting shot.

[no_dammagE]

regarding the GPL you are fully right, Charles. I just take a project as a whole, not as a compile of different contributions although I know the GPL from the beginning to the end
Does the LW CVS have records of all contributions? If so, there is a possibility to change the code by reimplementing contributed source, but LW is so old and I think that it had so many contributions, that a relicencing will be a shot in the foot.

I appreciate all LimeWire progress and all research, but I don't know how such an ambitious project could exchange free speech against censoring... I still can't believe it. To be honest: it is a bad day for FOSS I always believed in: specially a FOSS project, a GPL project which should stands for the freedoms of its user implements a filter.

It is a dark day for the whole open source community. I would laugh at Kazaa, I would laugh at Morpheus, I would laugh at Piolet and eDonkey and Zultrax and Warez and any other closed-source commercial client.

To be honest: IMEyes Limewire introduced the new black era for P2P!

[socguy]

Who owns Limewire and for what purpose? In my eyes this is the first step to transforming Limewire into a pay service like Napster or Itunes. Soon Limewire will be able to go to the record companies and say "Why don't you sell your music through us. We have a large marketshare (2 million+) users online at any given time and we can ensure that nothing will be shared if they haven't paid." The RIAA will have a network that can finally compete with Fasttrack.

S.

[DaBlade]

Limewire users, back up your source codes and learn to compile.

[xenof]

gregoriooooooooooooooooooooooooo
gregorioooooooooooooo
where are you?

[Overnet User]

Could this be the death of limewire as we know it?

[socguy]

I never thought I'd say this but I feel bad for Bearshare and Gnucleus, Morpheus and Shareaza. If this happens, they are going to become nothing but a resource for Limewire clients to download from but will get little in return.

[Allied]

Mark Gorton, the chief executive of the Lime Group... ...Some people are saying that as long as I don't actively induce infringement, I'm O.K.," he said. "I don't think it will work out that way

RIAA sent several letter to various P2P developers. The letter, which LimeWire is believed to have been a recipient of, demands that P2P developers prevent their users from infringing on copyrights or face litigation. It now appears that LimeWire might bow to this demand.

Would it be unfair to call him a coward? LimeWire's got a million fans out there. A home on sourceforge. The Gnutella consortium's full support. Surely they could find a server outside the US.
Think aobut it, there's many torrent, ED2K and magnet sites out there that've been around for years. No matter how many letters the **AA's send them, they keep working. TPB even feels secure enough to laugh in their faces.

Even if a million of LimeWire mods come out that don't have this license detection system, a once super power will become a tool of DRM.
I'd rather see LimeWire die with dignity.

[xenof]

I never thought I'd say this but I feel bad for Bearshare and Gnucleus, Morpheus and Shareaza. If this happens, they are going to become nothing but a resource for Limewire clients to download from but will get little in return.

shareaza is mostly a gnutella2 p2p

[IceCube]

Oh bugger, another client I never used going on the way side. Even if every client gets killed by DRM, I always have a huge list of podcasting to listen to... so no matter what, I can still give the recording industry the finger.

[Christopher]

The Pirate Bay has the laws of their country behind them though. Something tells me that this guy lives in the United States, where the copyright laws have been getting excessively stacked in favor of the people who own the copyrights.

If he does add these features (or crippling), to Limewire, people will leave it for another filesharing app.
We are getting tired of being told what we can do with our own software, just because some people infringe copyrights with it. I mean, you don't see them saying "Shut down or cripple FTP", even though it can be used to infringe on copyrights.
This is just the MPAA, RIAA and others having sour grapes, because they are worried that if people can use p2p applications to distribute their recordings, there will be no use for places like BGM.

[no_dammagE]

well, take LimeWire LLC as a SCAM. No, no serious, but pretend it would be scam trying to sell something what is free [as freedom]. What will happen? A fork? A fork which they still sell, but isnt source code mine.

No wait, it is yours. No, it is yours. No, it is mine. Remember the confusing scene @ architect? That`s kinda that scene, but about LimeWire instead of Microsoft ... err ... Matrix. Still the same

Anyone ready for a drop of technology (or idea in G0.6/G2 means) where people payed blood for? Me not! Gnutella [idea] will survive my own nuclear strike [as stated by Nullsoft in old days!]

Damn, I had 5 beer, don't take me [since ~1hour] too serously. My nation drings fast and a lot, don't wonder
--

I can understand LimeWire [LLC?!] who try to sell what they can sell, but it would be invitable if the filter source would be relatively optional and by optional I mean an ant script which allows both non-filtered and filtered builds.