Big 4 labels kill LimeWire. So what?
p2pnet view P2P:- To the vast majority of online music lovers, Limewire has been dead for a long time.
But now it’s finally and officially offline, thanks entirely to the ministrations of the four most hated names in the world of corporate music — Vivendi Universal (France), Sony (Japan), EMI (Britain), and Warner Music (US, but controlled by Canadian Edgar Bronfman jr).
But really, so what? The open source Limewire software has allowed all kinds of GPL look-alikes to spring up, and they’re still very much alive.
“I expect it’ll be similar to when Kazaa shut down”, says David Barrett, going on >>>
1) Most people don’t notice at first
2) Lots of unofficial copies of Limewire start showing up in the Google Search results, most of which have malware attached
3) The network slowly degrades, without Limewire, Inc to manage it
4) Limewire users gradually get fed up and look for alternatives
5) The free streaming services get a boost in traffic as users who haven’t previously paid attention start to notice them.
6) BitTorrent absorbs most of the former Limewire users, and they start to wonder why they didn’t switch years ago
7) Paid services see essentially no bump
8 ) Piracy sees essentially no dip, or possibly even a bump due to BitTorrent being so much easier to mass-pirate than Limewire (which was more about individual files, whereas BitTorrent is about pirating entire archives at at time)
9) Nothing substantial changes for anybody, except for the world having one less grey-market player (Limewire) even bothering with a pretense of legality, and therefore one less possible partner for any genuine reform
According to to CEO George Searle, “Our team of technologists and music enthusiasts are creating a completely new music service that puts you back at the center of your digital music experience.”
But “Limewire’s new service, of course, either never launches or is DOA”, says Barrett.
Meanwhile, in the real world of online music …
completely new music – LimeWire is dead: official, October 26, 2010
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
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October 27th, 2010 at 1:08 pm
In the wake of the LimeWire court injuction, one needs to consider:
Frostwire (forked from the original LimeWire code base) is totally P2P: meaning they CAN’T shut it down. Napster wasn’t truly P2P (they still needed a central server to connect users). Limewire’s new clients relied more on central services to run certain features, and so that’s why the older LimeWire progs still work after the shutdown of Limewire. Frostwire on the other hand is 100% P2P which means it cannot be suppressed. You can’t sue the hundreds of people for writing the software… the devs aren’t stealing anything – they are just writing code – which should be protected by the 1st amendment. It’s legal to write a book describing how to build a bomb (freedom of expression), but it’s the use of that knowledge put into action that becomes illegal. Same with P2P software. Likewise, it’s the users of the software that commit the crime, but you can’t sue billions of people… it’s just not possible. The RIAA must learn that if they want to stop piracy, they simply have to adjust product pricing to REASONABLE levels and people won’t bother to pirate their content. Simple, but they won’t do it.
October 27th, 2010 at 1:58 pm
@John Rogers:
They won’t lower prices because they don’t want to lower profits. The artists already receive SFA in terms of royalties, so lowering prices would actually reduce record company profits, and they can’t have that.
And we already know that worse than lower prices to those labels is losing control over the content and how/when/where it is viewed. That upsets them even more.
October 27th, 2010 at 6:58 pm
“I expect it’ll be similar to when Kazaa shut down”
What? When did Kazaa shut down?
October 27th, 2010 at 8:02 pm
Hi Rabbit80, information on that is here: http://www.dailytech.com/Kazaa+to+Pay+100+Million+to+Record+Labels/article3535.htm
Similar to Limewire, the company itself lumbers on. However, it has transformed from a wildly successful pirate network into an irrelevant vendor of licensed music. To be honest, I didn’t even know they were still in business until I did a bit of sleuthing to respond to your comment. More information on the history of Kazaa is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazaa
Thanks for asking!
-david
October 27th, 2010 at 8:17 pm
@ David & Rabbit80:
Thanks. And there’s a bit more here – http://www.p2pnet.net/story/17331
Cheers!
October 27th, 2010 at 11:14 pm
Jon, tip for your Kids and Kartels section:
http://www.montrealfamilies.ca/articles/10_nov/f_lyrics.htm
quote:
I was even more shocked to learn that 4- and 5-year olds would be performing to Kesha’s Your Love is my Drug (“My status is gonna be affected if I keep it up like a love sick crackhead”) and the pre-teen boys would be dancing on stage to Robbie Williams’ Hotel Motel Holiday Inn (“I think with my dingalingaling”).
I met with the 18-year-old camp director who shrugged off my concerns, saying the kids had chosen the song themselves and she had picked a “clean” version of the lyrics for them to learn. I patiently explained that my kids might choose to have chocolate cupcakes and orange soda for breakfast if I left it up to them, and that even a “clean” version of a song about seducing a young girl pushes the boundaries of good judgement for this age group. The conversation left me wondering if I was making a fuss out of nothing. Many people (especially the teenaged counsellors) seemed to think it was precocious and cute to see little kids dancing along to these songs.
October 29th, 2010 at 11:55 pm
Curious curious. My limewire is still working.
September 2nd, 2011 at 8:27 pm
It changes because some low level users will not find a new program to pirate. They will actually need to find one