A legal notice on LimeWire.com now warns users of an injunction against the filesharing website. LimeWire was the world’s most well loved peer-to-peer filesharing websites, followed closely by Ares.
These file-sharing programs are also called P2P, or peer-to-peer programs. Unlike the ancient Napster network that ran all exchanges through a central server, these free music download software programs use P2P networks connects users directly to each additional allowing them to download and burn free music. Both Ares and Limewire were founded in 2000, but Ares has kept a decrease profile, while Limewire flourished by attracting as much attention as possible.
The site’s popularity is reflected in a survey by NDP Group, which establish that LimeWire was used by 58% of public who have downloaded music from a peer-to-peer network in the year from May 2009.This compares with only 29% who used Ares, the second most well loved P2P filesharing network.
Above and beyond the high profile Limewire pursued, they also had a large corporate presence that controlled the software and served as a target for the RIAA to go with. Last week, A federal court in New York issued a permanent injunction against LimeWire late on Tuesday, ruling that the platform intentionally caused a massive scale of infringement by permitting the sharing of thousands of copyrighted works by its 50 million monthly users.
US judge Kimba Wood ruled that record companies have suffered – and will continue to suffer – irreparable harm from LimeWire’s inducement of widespread infringement of their works, adding that the potential hurts were staggering.
The court also ruled that LimeWire should use all reasonable technological means to immediately conclude and give up copyright infringements still taking place through applications by now downloaded.
Yesterday’s court order comes with a four-year legal battle between LimeWire and the Recording Industry Association of America, the representative body for many of the world’s largest record marks which is at war with P2P programs used for downloading music such as Ares and Limewire.
In May, Wood establish LimeWire liable for widespread copyright infringement. The level of hurts faced by the site’s New York-based parent company, Lime Group, will be chose in January 2011. The RIAA said LimeWire, Ares, and additional P2P programs have cost the music industry hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.According RIAA figures, US recorded music sales fell to $7.7bn in 2009 from $14.5bn in 1999. The rise to prominence of peer-to-peer filesharing networks is singled out as a primary factor for this decline by the RIAA.
Following Tuesday’s injunction, the RIAA said: For the better part of the last decade, LimeWire and Gorton have violated the law. 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.
Napster, which claimed more than 100 million users at the height of its popularity at the beginning of the decade, collapsed in 2002 under the strain of a number of legal challenges. With Limewire now shuttered, this leaves Ares as the largest player left, but it may escape the wrath of the RIAA due to the non-centralized nature of the distribution network for the software.
