LimeWire Officially Responds to LimeWire Pirate Edition
As you may remember, last month the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled in favor of the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and ordered LimeWire to shut down its entire operation. The RIAA argued in court that LimeWire “intentionally encouraged infringement” by LimeWire users, that LimeWire is used “overwhelmingly for infringement”, that LimeWire knew about the “substantial infringement being committed” by its users, and that LimeWire’s business model depends on mass copyright infringements.
If you visited the LimeWire.com website after the court injunction, you would be presented with the following message: LEGAL NOTICE This is an official notice that LimeWire is under a court-ordered injunction to stop distributing and supporting its file-sharing software. Downloading or sharing copyrighted content without authorization is illegal.
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But the story did not end there. A couple of weeks after the injunction, a few developers from the original LimeWire development team came up with LimeWire Pirate Edition and rolled it out to torrent sites. LimeWire Pirate Edition is LimeWire Pro 5.6 without the advertising, Ask.com toolbar, remote settings and dependencies on LimeWire LLC’s servers; LimeWire Pirate Edition offers all the features of LimeWire PRO for free.
The story did not stop there either. LimeWire has updated the message users see when they visit LimeWire.com; in the updated message it is basically asking LimeWire Pirate Edition to cease and desist. Here’s the actual message:
“LimeWire is under a court order dated October 26, 2010 to stop distributing the LimeWire software. A copy of the injunction can be found here. LimeWire LLC, its directors and officers, are taking all steps to comply with the injunction. We have very recently become aware of unauthorized applications on the internet purporting to use the LimeWire name. We demand that all persons using the LimeWire software, name, or trademark in order to upload or download copyrighted works in any manner cease and desist from doing so. We further remind you that the unauthorized uploading and downloading of copyrighted works is illegal.”
Should be interesting to see if the cease and desist has any effect; chances are it won’t.
As you may remember, 