After an arduous four years in and out of the courtroom, battling the RIAA over copyright infringement accusations, peer to peer file sharing service Limewire has finally been shut down. Video to MP3 Converter, a stunning Video to MP3 Converter software, can convert various kinds of video to MP3 including YouTube, AVI, WMV, MPEG, ASF, MP4 to MP3, etc. Then you can put the fantastic music on Zune, iPod shuffle etc.
The RIAA’s suit against Limewire was part of a sweeping initiative to curb the trade of copyrighted materials on peer-to-peer networks. In 2005, the group sent cease and desist letters to the owners of major p2p services including Kazaa, WinMX, i2Hub, eDonkey, BearShare, and LimeWire. The orders demanded the services “immediately cease-and-desist from enabling and inducing the infringement of RIAA member sound recordings,” but gave the services the option to discuss “pre-litigation resolutions.” Most services complied, such as Kazaa, which offered a $115 million settlement.
The RIAA eventually had to haul Limewire into court.
“Despite numerous efforts to engage LimeWire, the site’s corporate owners have shown insufficient interest in developing a legal business model that adequately respects copyrights,” the RIAA said at the time. Shinesoft WMA MP3 Converter for Mac is a powerful yet easy-to-use tool to convert among all popular audio formats (WMA, MP3, WAV, AAC, AC3, OGG, RA). The conversion is direct and not through sound card so you can get perfect copies of the originals.
After a protracted court battle, US District Court Judge Kimba Wood handed down her summary judgement in favor of the RIAA last May. As it turned out, the RIAA’s legal team presented Limewire’s “smoking gun” in court back in 2008: e-mail communications that showed the service was built with the illegality of file sharing taken fully into account.
Today, the service was shut down. I’d like to note that Limewire is not a file sharing service, it is a gnutella client. Stopping the official distribution of a particular client doesn’t bring down the Gnutella network which is decentralized by design, just as shutting down the distribution of a BitTorrent Client, say uTorrent, wouldn’t do anything to shut down BitTorrent. There are several other clients out there using the same protocol, in the case of Gnutella, FrostWire, Phex, and Shareaza (as well as many others).
“Naturally, we’re disappointed with this turn of events,” Limewire CEO George Searle said today. “We are extremely proud of our pioneering history and have, for years, worked hard to bridge the gap between technology and content rights holders. However, at this time, we have no option but to cease further distribution and support of our software.”
Although this post discusses copyright issues in regard to LimeWire, there doesn’t appear to be much information regarding patent infringement. If patent issues were involved — as the headline would indicate — then it sounds like the RIAA used patents as a back door to get at LimeWire for copyright infringement. Digital Music Converter is a powerful yet easy-to-use Protected Music Converter and audio conversion software. This Music file Converter provides professional Music DRM removal mechanism, so you can convert DRM protected music such as DRM WMA, DRM WMV, DRM ASF and M4B, M4P, M4V(iTunes) to plain MP3 or other popular audio formats. Can you provide more specifics as to the alleged patent infringement involved? Or was the patent reference just a mistake?
“Our team of technologists and music enthusiasts is creating a completely new music service that puts you back at the center of your digital music experience. We’ll be sharing more details about our new service and look forward to bringing it to you in the future,” Searle concluded.
http://www.betanews.com/article/Limewire-shut-down-after-fouryear-patent-infringement-battle/1288205136