Friday, June 04, 2010

RIAA asks for permanent injunction in Arista v Limewire

Although the case has not yet been concluded, the RIAA have made a motion requesting a permanent injunction in Arista v. Lime Group.

Proposed injunction
Memorandum of Law




Commentary & discussion:

Punto Informatico (Italian)



Keywords: lawyer digital copyright law online internet law legal download upload peer to peer p2p file sharing filesharing music movies indie independent label freeculture creative commons pop/rock artists riaa independent mp3 cd favorite songs intellectual property portable music player

4 comments:

Jim said...

While I cant read the proposed injunction because of a bad url, the memorandum shows that the lawyers have no clue as to the technology they seek to stop.
Unlike Kazaa, grokster, and napster, there is nothing that can or will be shut down. They may try to stop the distribution of the limewire client. But the client is so widespread on the internet that they have no real chance of it disappearing. The same thing happened when AOL tried to stop the original gnutella client.
Speaking on the technology side, I think they have no idea of what they are trying to stop, this is the gnutella network. There is no server to be shut down that will kill the network like with napster and grokster. Each client is a part of the network and can function without a server in some warehouse. It will be impossible to close it down. All clients will still function even if Limeware as a group/company ceases to exist.

Alter_Fritz said...

I#m a bit confused here:
What has µtorrent to do with limewire? and all the other mentioned "companies" (like the pirate bay)
I thought the owners of µTorrent, the Bittorrent company is in good standing with the MPAA?
And this thing with the emails.
I thought that you americans have very harsh laws against unsolicited email stuff.
why can this lawyer Mr. Klaus demand that judge Woods signs an injunction that orders Limewire to do such email spamming?

confused
Alter_Fritz

P.S. your first link is broken: the / is at the wrong place

Jim said...

I am confused with some of the requests myself. They seem to be trying to sneak in a whole list of software (Definitions Section e subsection i) and seek to get that list to be labeled as "Comparable System" without any of them being involved, or to my knowledge found to be guilty of anything. They then ask that the Limewire Group not be allowed to distribute said software.
Secondly, after figuring out where the / went in the url of the proposed injunction. They are in fact clueless about the gnutella network. They seek to have Limewire shut down any server that enables or facilitates (Terms section c).
The Gnutella network doesnt need a server, well it does, but the clients are also servers. There is no way to shut it down by just pulling a plug on a central server like they did with napster or grokster.

Anonymous said...

I'm just wondering when "the people" are really going to have enough of all this an really start fighting back? There has been some talk of racketeering charges and while it seems like people are not really serious about it, my unprofessional opinion is that there would be merit to such a criminal case. Sure there have been some defensive victories, but there is nothing to stop them from continuing to use their enforcer lawyers unless there are actual real consequences for their actions.