File Sharing Sites Coming To An End?

Friday - September 22, 2006 by Alexis Chase

Six years after the demise of Napster, peer-to-peer networks are still settling with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

According to CNET, last week P2P network eDonkey announced that they will settle a copywright-infringement lawsuit with the RIAA for $300 million and completely close the site. eDonkey2000 users prompted to update their software were forced to watch the product uninstall after initiating the update and visitors to the website are met with a message displaying visitor IP addresses and warning internet users that they are not anonymous online.

In August it was discovered that Kazaa settled with RIAA for $115 million and though still operational, P2P application Limewire is currently facing a $476 million lawsuit, which is expected to go to court next month.

Since the original Napster fallout many file sharers have drifted toward other sources - like the non-node-connected BitTorrent protocol which allows users to download files from multiple sources at the same time. The legality of many currently existing programs is still being decided, but some corporations are opting to form partnerships with technology providers in order to distribute their products via the internet. In May Warner Bros. opted to partner with BitTorrent, allowing their video content to be distributed online legally. As SOHH previously reported Warner Bros also recently partnered with internet video hosting site YouTube.com.

Technology experts are now speculating that after years of fighting costly lawsuits it's possible that conventional peer-to-peer networks may be coming to an end.

What the hell is their problem anyway? Why won't they let us just listen to music!?!?!

Because it's not fattening their wallets enough, or at least that's what they claim the reason is. Also this prevents them for making their prices even higher for the CD's, because they might push even more people towards P2P

They can sue all they want, IF they by some stroke of bad luck, they manage to shut down all the "conventional" p2p networks, something new will pop up and take it's place.
Look what happened after napster? More people than ever are downloading music and other files.

This might interest you guys. Especially the comments below the article

http://news.com.com/2010-1025_3-6134...-0-5&subj=news

dictionary.com defines extremist as:

The views that Digital Freedom express cannot be that extreme. If they were, do you really think so many people would be downloading songs "illegaly"?

They did this to themselves. Before DRM protection the number of people that downloaded instead of buying was much lower. Also those "Legal" downloads, that they are so proud of, have the quality of a 1980's mixtape recording from the radio. Why not sell FLAC quality that people can then burn to disk (Oh, I forgot. Then the people would not have to buy each song more than once, if they want it both on CD and their harddrive)

Seriously. Try an experiment. Buy a song online, and then buy the CD containing the song. Listen to both and compare.

BTW far from all people do it illegally. Many contries don't have the strict laws that the US "RIAA controlled" government have made.

Don't get me wrong here, I still buy music even if I download too, but will never ever pay 99cents for a crappy quality song. Also I will never buy a CD where there is copyprotection on preventing me to enjoy the music on my PC as well. (Well actually I did buy one by mistake once, but never again)

Ya, I hear ya. I refuse to buy from Itunes, napster, and other such places mainly because of DRM.

My limewire is not letting me download music. I know I have an older pc and have dial up, but I have never had a problem downloading. My limewire has not been connecting recently. Has it been shutdown for some reason? Just wondered?

Limewire can't be shut down just like that

Running just fine. The only way you can be shut down forcebly is if your ISP blocks Limewire, and I have never heard about that happening when using Dial-Up