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Court shuts down LimeWire music-sharing service


Mike

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NEW YORK (Reuters) – A U.S. federal judge on Tuesday granted the music industry's request to shut down the popular LimeWire file-sharing service, which had been found liable for copyright infringement.

The ruling by Judge Kimba Wood in Manhattan federal court halts one of the world's biggest services for letting consumers share music, movies and TV shows for free over the Internet.

Saying that LimeWire's parent Lime Wire LLC intentionally caused a "massive scale of infringement" involving thousands of works, Wood issued a permanent injunction that requires the company to disable its "searching, downloading, uploading, file trading and/or file distribution functionality."

Record companies "have suffered -- and will continue to suffer -- irreparable harm from Lime Wire's inducement of widespread infringement of their works," Wood wrote.

She called the potential damages "staggering," and probably "well beyond" the New York-based company's ability to pay.

The signed ruling was made available by The Recording Industry Association of America, which represents music companies. It has said Lime Wire has cost its members hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. A copy of the ruling was not immediately available on the public court docket.

In a statement, Lime Wire expressed disappointment at the ruling. "While this is not our ideal path, we're working with the music industry to move forward," it said.

Lime Wire said the injunction lets it continue testing a service that allows users to buy music from independent labels. The company said it hopes to negotiate agreements with the entire music industry ahead of a full launch.

Founded in 2000 by Mark Gorton, Lime Wire has been a thorn in the side of record companies because millions of fans used it as an easy means to find and download music for free.

U.S. recorded music sales have fallen in value to $7.7 billion in 2009 from $14.5 billion in 1999 according to the RIAA. The music industry blames online and physical piracy as the primary reasons for the decline.

"MASSIVE PIRACY" ALLEGED

Tuesday's injunction "will start to unwind the massive piracy machine that Lime Wire and Gorton used to enrich themselves immensely," the RIAA said in a statement. It said the court will consider damages at a January trial.

The RIAA represents labels owned by Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and EMI Group, owned by the Terra Firma private equity firm.

LimeWire has said it has more than 50 million monthly users. These users accounted for 58 percent of people who said they downloaded music from a peer-to-peer service in 2009, a survey by NPD Group showed.

As technology and broadband speeds have improved, LimeWire has also been used to illegally share movies and popular TV shows, attracting criticism from Hollywood as well.

Wood's decision to shut the LimeWire service followed a unanimous 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling against file-sharing service Grokster Ltd.

In that ruling, the court said companies could be sued for copyright infringement if they distributed services designed to be used for that purpose, even if the devices could also be used lawfully.

The case is Arista Records LLC et al v Lime Group et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 06-05936.

Copyright © 2010 Reuters Limited.

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^^I was just about to say something similar -- I don't know anyone who relies on Limewire or similar p2p programs to share music anymore. Maybe back in 2000 or something, but not today. The risk of spyware/virus/malware infection through those programs was more of a threat than the RIAA and it's stormtroopers knocking your door down, anyhow.

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I don't even really use torrents for anything except TV shows. Mad Men, Real Time with Bill Maher and Pretty Little Liars (it's on hiatus right now) are the three shows I never miss(ed) an episode of, and would use torrents to download episodes of. I also use torrents for documentary movies, but not full-length feature films.

I use regular websites like forums and blogs if there's anything I want musically, especially bootlegs.

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Ok, I'm out of touch but I'm probably twice

as old as anyone on this board and I can't keep

up with everything.

I still use Limewire and it still works but it

has a notice that says it's illegal, So that

ends that. I downloaded Frostwire and it was

working for awhile now it's telling me it's

disconnected. Does anyone know what the trouble

might be?

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I haven't a clue either, I don't use it. If you're looking to get something, you don't need to use p2p software programs to get it. Just do a google search or something and you'll usually find something that's hosted on a blog or a message board of some kind. Now, if you have super-strict anti-virus/anti-spyware/anti-malware programs on your system like I do, then you probably could get away with it.

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I got rid of Frostwire it seemed to slow my

computer down and I installed Ares by some one's

suggestion here. I like it so far.

I don't know if anyone had heard of it but my

son-in-law ( who I have similar musical taste with)go figure. It's a site from Russia I think

you can download songs for 15 cents. It use to

9 cents, but it's still a good deal.

I think it's called Go music now.

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