Just when you thought the Internet was becoming a DMZ for the RIAA, along comes news that P2P company LimeWire has been hit with a major complaint by the recording industry. Sony BMG Music, Vivendi Universal Music, Warner Music Group and EMI have sued LimeWire in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York seeking $150,000 for each instance in which LimeWire helped to distribute an unauthorized song.
It’s the first post-Grokster suit against an online P2P company — the record companies allege that LimeWire is actively facilitating, encouraging and enticing users to swap music illegally by failing to block access to copyrighted works and by profiting from the illegal sharing of songs. In Grokster, the Supreme Court ruled that to the extent a site encourages copyright violations, then the site is liable for penalites undcer the copyright laws.
The Gnutella-based LimeWire is the leading file-sharing program for music, the RIAA contends, and hasn’t stepped forward with a deal to reshape itself into a legitimate music distributor, the way Napster and Kazaa have (Kazaa just settled with the RIAA and MPAA).
“While other services have come productively to the table, LimeWire has sat back and continued to reap profits on the backs of the music community,” the trade group said. “That is unfortunate and has left us no choice but to file a lawsuit to protect the rights and livelihoods of artists, songwriters and record label employees, as well as those companies building legitimate businesses based on music.”
LimeWire is wisely saying nothing — the best posture to follow when hit by a complicated, life-threatening lawsuit by well-backed, litigious plaintiffs. The LimeWire blog has been totally silent today.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 4:56 PM | Print | Comments (0)Wikipedia, the bold online encyclopedic experiment that is now among the top twenty web sites in the world, is suddenly grabbing the limelight. First, the New Yorker presented this excellent perspective piece by Stacy Shiff on the rise of the user-edited site.
Then, Steven Colbert pushed his audience to change reality by urging them to edit Wikipedia’s elephant entries (and Colbert himself apparently edited an entry on George Washington during live taping of his show.) Here’s the video of this hilarious stunt.
Today Dave Weinberger and others are blogging from Wikimania, the annual Wikipedia conference. Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder, gave the kick-off talk this morning (MP3 here) noting that even controversy doesn’t dim Wikipedia’s standing. Page views at Wikipedia tripled after a public attack on the credibility of the site by Lawrence Siegenthaler.
Wales announced that Wikipedia will extend its successful wisdom of the crowds to new ventures, including Wikiversity, a center for the creation and sharing of educational materials and Wikiwyg, a WYSIWYG interface that will make it easier for tech-challenged experts to contribute to the site.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 2:48 PM | Print | Comments (0)
From bizarro land comes this new group, or at least new web site, called “We are the Web.” It purports to be advancing the cause of net neutrality.
However, I leave it to everybody else to determine if this is a joke, a serious stand by some truly offbeat people or a marketing ploy for the site’s parent company, an “agency” called space 150.
WeAreTheWeb has a jaw-dropping music video advocating net neutrality that features “celebrities,” including a woman dressed up in some kind of space outfit (see picture above), a man in a Peter Pan ensemble who says he’s a fairy and a man who calls himself “Tron Guy,” who is an aficionado of both costumes and computer technology.
If nothing else, WeAreTheWeb will give you some insight into just how idiosyncratic human beings can be.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:51 AM | Print | Comments (2)
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