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Court Slams Music Pirate With Huge Fine – of $41.00 Posted: 28 Oct 2010 03:51 AM PDT A young man, who as a teenager file-shared two music tracks, has finally discovered his fate. After rightsholders demanded damages of 600 euros ($828) the case dragged through the legal system. After nearly five years a court in Germany has just published its decision. It ruled that the damages demands of the rightsholders were excessive and instead ordered the defendant to pay 30 euros ($41.00) damages. In 2006, a then 16 year-old German used a file-sharing network to make available two music tracks, “Angel” by “Rammstein” and “Roll Over not” by Marius Müller-Westernhagen. The teenager had used his father’s Internet connection to share the songs. Rightsholders monitoring the unauthorized sharing mounted a case and demanded 300 euros ($414) per track, a total of 600 euros in damages. Yesterday the Hamburg Regional Court published its final decision. Firstly, the Court rejected the rightsholders claims against connection owner, the teenager’s father. He neither carried out infringements or authorized them, and had no knowledge of them occurring. Although he was considered responsible for his connection, that did not lead to a liability for damages. However, the Court did uphold the complaint against the teenager. It was determined that he had violated copyright law and as such was required to pay compensation to the rightsholders. There was, however, disagreement on the amount to be paid. While the rightsholders had demanded 600 euros in damages, it was for the Court to decide the amount to be paid for what would in effect amount to a fictitious license for the songs. The Court took several parameters into consideration when arriving at its decision. Notably it was decided that since the tracks were old there would be a limited demand for them. Furthermore, since it could only be proven that the tracks were made available for a short amount of time, few downloads of the tracks would have taken place. To this end the Court ruled that the defendant should pay damages of just 30 euros ($41.40). Lawblog.de notes that the decision puts recent damages claims against file-sharers of 1000 euros per song under severe pressure. In the light of this ruling by the Hamburg Regional Court, even brand new hits might only be worth 40 to 80 euros per infringement. Article from: TorrentFreak.

Dozens of Great Alternatives To LimeWire Posted: 27 Oct 2010 11:23 AM PDT After more than a decade of loyal service, LimeWire was shut down yesterday by a U.S. Court. As LimeWire was one of the world's most used P2P-applications, the shutdown affected millions of people, mostly casual downloaders. Luckily for them, there are plenty of alternatives and potential replacements former LimeWire users can choose from. After a lengthy court battle, LimeWire lost its case with the RIAA yesterday. The New York District Court demanded that LimeWire shut down its entire operation, including all searches and uploading and downloading that occurs through the client. In a response to the decision LimeWire made its client unusable, leaving millions of users with no other option than to find an alternative. The good news is that there are several applications and services that are ready to act as a replacement. We will discuss a few of them below. FrostWire FrostWire is a popular free and Open Source P2P client supporting both Gnutella and BitTorrent downloads. The application was first released in 2004 by members of the LimeWire Open Source community. FrostWire is similar to LimeWire in use and layout, and is fully compatible with iTunes. There are versions available for various operating systems including Windows, Mac, Linux and even Android. FrostWire has always emphasized the non-infringing use of their client. In 2008, the client introduced its FrostClick service through which it promotes independent artists, which has been very successful. MP3Rocket MP3Rocket is another LimeWire spinoff with a very similar look and functionality. It works on Windows and Mac and the application supports both Gnutella and BitTorrent downloads. Unlike its name suggests, MP3Rocket is not limited to finding MP3s. It is capable of downloading any file format including video files and software. In addition to downloads, MP3Rocket also has hundreds of streamable radio and TV-channels. BitTorrent The two applications we discussed above both support BitTorrent downloads, but like LimeWire they were rarely used for this purpose. The main reason is most likely that many of its users don’t really know where to find .torrent files. For those who want to switch over, here is a list of some decent torrent sites. LimeWire users who want to give BitTorrent a try might also want to consider using a dedicated torrent client such as uTorrent, Vuze or Transmission. Music/Video Streaming Music fans who don't mind streaming tracks in their web browser actually have a few alternatives. Grooveshark is one of the most elaborate music services. It holds more content than the average download store, supports playlists and works on various mobile phones. For video streaming there are perhaps even more alternatives. There are literally hundreds of sites one can choose from, although we have to warn of excessive popups on most sites. A Google search for “movie streaming” should be enough to get going. Usenet / Newsgroups Usenet is another good alternative to download all sorts of files, but depending on the service you sign up for it can be a bit harder to figure out than the other alternatives. Also, any good Usenet service requires a paid subscription, which is the trade-off for getting one of the fastest and most anonymous download services. Direct Download Sites / Search Engines There are numerous sites that search open web directories or allow saving of otherwise streaming music. BeeMP3, DilanDau, MRTZCMP3, MP3Hunting and various Mulve-style alternatives such as the PirateApp and Firefox plugin Vkontakte DL are just a few of those available. More More More The alternatives discussed above are really just the tip of the iceberg. There are dozens, if not hundreds of alternatives to LimeWire that can be used for sharing and finding files. This includes some of the older LimeWire versions that are reportedly still working. Other notable P2P applications are Soulseek, Ares and eMule. It never ends. Article from: TorrentFreak.

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