Limewire: no more sharing of copy-protected materials?
Posted by Dr. Macenstein
According to The Register, The soon to be released version 5 of the popular Gnutella file sharing software for both Mac and PC may have copy protection built in, thus stopping users from distributing copy-protected files. In theory users would still be allowed to share their own work or any files they have permission to share via a Creative Commons license. This protection feature is a direct result of increasing legal pressure from the recording industry. A final decision from Limewire’s chief Mark Gorton is all that is needed for the “feature” to be a go.
Credibility: 7/10
I got an update warning “strongly urging me to update for the future of peer to peer sharing and artists rights” and bla bla bla, or something along those lines last month, so I updated and now there is like 60% less content and there is a column called lic#, I guess thats about it for limewire, too bad, I built an awesome library thanks to them (and the lot of youall). I’ve been using Xfactor as of late, they include limewire (whats left of it) in their network as well as gunatella, ares and openft. It’s got a cool interface, but it’s not as fast as LW.
I think it is a positive step towards legal infringement laws. However, users are not going to praise it at all.
Don Lapre Lover
laura@lauraglydaband.com