In class we were asked if we downloaded media illegally. Well, whether or not you do- you most likely know what Limewire is. However, in case you don't Limewire is a free peer-to-peer sharing. In another class of mine, Introduction to Media and Society, we also keep up with a semester long blog- mine is focused on music. When I was creating a recent post I stumbled upon the current lawsuit against Limewire for copyright infringement. If you now visit Limewire's officially website (www.limewire.com), you cannot click around on the site, rather you see a white box stating, " LEGAL NOTICE: This is an official notice that LimeWire is under a court-ordered injunction to stop distributing and supporting its file-sharing software. Downloading or sharing copyrighted content without authorization is illegal.". From my understanding, this is a recent charge of which I have found many article on. I was particularly struck by the article by the RIAA, claiming Limewire shouldn't be proud (Limewire employees are still stating that they are proud of what they did and hold no shame). Here is the link to the article, http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2371667,00.asp.
Personally, I was expecting this to happen eventually and I am surprised it took this long. I believe that this incident may serve as a catalyst in the movement to reform digital media- as far as obtaining music, downloading, etc.
I just wonder what will really come out of this. With Napster, they did actually shut the site down. But I feel nowadays it is too difficult to track the source and that file sharing will not be going anywhere soon. Like you said, this lawsuit may be a catalyst for what is to come... but I honestly feel that it is going to take a lot more than a lawsuit to stop this new music downloading movement.
ReplyDeleteLimewire was a really bad virus filled music sharing program anyway. After i downloaded limewire this past summer, my computer completely crashed. There are so many other ways to download music without putting your computer at risk.
ReplyDeleteThere will never be a way to stop people from sharing music over the internet. There are just too many users in too many locations. There is no way everyone can be monitored. There are also different laws depending on where you are, you can be sharing music with someone in Russia. Torents have also made it easier to share music, in a more discrete way.
ReplyDeleteLimewire may be dead, but as stated, the life of the program lasted much longer than expected and the golden years of Limewire have passed anyway. There are so many other ways to obtain free music online. You can easily google a song title and type "download" or "mp3" next to it in the search box and find music for free. I feel that the RIAA thought shutting down Limewire would make a substantial change but I believe this change just gives the informed "pirate" the opportunity to search for other ways to achieve the same goal, free music. I feel that only 2 types of people will start paying for their music now: the people that feel guilty about downloading illegally, and the people that don't know alternatives to Limewire.
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