“The Termination of Limewire Solves Music Theft Problem.” psych.

[Nora Geissler]

After a four-year battle with the music industry, LimeWire, one of the worlds most popular “peer-to-peer file sharing” sites has been shut down. A federal court issued a permanent removal of LimeWire, saying that it intentionally caused a “massive scale of infringement” by permitting people to share thousands of copyrighted songs, videos, etc by its 50 million monthly users.

In May, LimeWire was officially found liable for widespread copyright infringement. The level of damages faced by the site's New York-based parent company, Lime Group, will be decided in January 2011. The Record companies want compensation for the millions of dollars lost due to LimeWire’s file sharing program.



Okay Mr. Music Producers, you shut LimeWire down for good. Is it REALLY solving the problem? There are plenty of other sites with the same motive, free music for anyone who downloads. Also websites that turn the tracks from videos on Youtube, into mp3 songs directly onto your itunes account. Even without the sites, kids and adults alike have been burning, sharing, and duplicating CD’s for years. All ending with free music for worthy buyers. I think that although the end of LimeWire is justified, in reality it won’t be much help to the artists who are most disappointed by stolen music, the buyers will simply find another way to get songs illegally.

Let me know what you think of this. The question at hand; is shutting down the system really solving anything? Even making a dent in the situation??

[Patrick Norman]

I agree that it won't stop anyone from downloading free music. If there is a will, there is a way. People really don't want to pay 1.29 for a freaking song on itunes. That's just ridiculous. I don't think this will stop anyone

[megan majewski]

i agree with you nor nor. there are still ways of getting around the shut down of limewire. even thugh burning cds a thing of the past, people will still do it to not have to pay for music. plus other ways could be sharing music through your USB drive. even though limewire is gone, its really not.

[Nick Fallico]

It will not solve the problem.  People just don't want to pay for music and I don't either.  When I was younger and didn't know how to do that stuff I bought off iTunes but now I never do.  I know that if I was the artist and people were downloading my music for free that I'd be mad and want them to pay for me.  I mean how would you feel if you went to work and they said they are no longer paying you or they were going to pay you significantly less?  Well you'd quit and find another job but they all say the same thing.  This is what is happening to the bands and even though I wouldn't want that to happen to me I still do it. oh well

[Alex Konrath]

No, getting rid of limewire wont change a thing. I can type in almost any song on google with the words "MP3 Download" and have a downloaded song in minutes. Not only that, what do you call burning CDs? I can burn one CD and hand it out to all my friends and now they all have the music, only i payed for.

[Jared Niec]

I was disappointed to find out that limewire was shut down. Granted it did let people file share and download songs illegally for the most part. But trying to stop people from stealing songs off the internet would be virtually impossible. Songs will always be downloaded illegally and that cannot be stopped. The creaters of limewire will most likely create another application to file-share songs and videos

[Carly Mckay]

I think shutting it down did make a small dent, a puncture so to speak hahaa. But that's just temporary, I feel like. It's just a matter of time before someone else comes up with the next lime wire. And like you said before, there are still soo many other ways to get free music. Its just the question of how long will it take for the loyal lime wire users to find some place else to get their music. And it's not like itunes is going to be their first option. A person who got music for free for years isn't about to start paying now!

[Nora Geissler]

Patrick you make a really good point! The artists should be more concerned with their effect on the world, isn't that their purpose anyway? They make music to "relate to people." They should be happy about the wider spread of their music.

[Robin de Freitas]

The termination of anything regarding music sharing and downloading is really stupid, they don't actually care about the billions of people taking their music, because in the end they make a profit from everything we do, their advertisements, us going to concerts, etc. Music producers also know that shutting down one massive site won't stop any illegal download, they just want to put a scare into people, and make a huge profit out of it.

[Patrick Witt]

I don't really know the specifics of LimeWire, but it truly doesn't sound that wrong to me. As you said, it was a peer-to-peer file sharing system. It sounds like the same thing as burning CD's for people. Maybe that's just my (mis)interpretation of it. You can even exchange entire albums via Skype. So should they shut down that as well? I'm a musician, and I really don't see anything wrong with stuff like this. I would much rather prefer to get my music out there than worry about how much I'm making from it. I stopped using LimeWire a couple years ago for personal preferences, and I have no problem spending my money on CD's by my favorite artists, and I'll occasionally ask my friends if they could give me copies of albums I don't have but wouldn't really spend my money on.

[Connor Bieda]

I completely agree with you, just shutting down limewire won't do any damage to downloading music illegally, because of all those other sites, but personally I buy all my songs because I had limewire before and it gave my computer a virus and it crashed, so I never want to take that risk again.