Limewire Forced to Close: Is It the End of File Sharing As We Know It?

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In a recent court ruling, Limewire has been forced to close its website.  While Limewire made for a really huge target for music company lawsuits, just like Napster was in the past, the injunction missed the real target.

I just fired up Limewire on one of my test computers, and as suspected, it works just like always.  The only difference is the legal notice that pops up when you start the Limewire client.

While shutting down the Limewire website might stop the downloading of the client from Limewire, it will have no effect on the millions of clients already installed.  Interestingly, I suspect that Frostwire and the many other variants of the Limewire client will benefit greatly from the closure of the Limewire site.

Shutting down the Limewire site does not shut down the Gnutella protocol, which is the basis for the file sharing.  So if the Judge thought that this injunction would put an end to illegal music downloads, it is a big misunderstanding of the technology of file sharing.

There are a lot of alternatives to the Limewire client out there and this will just be a very small bump in the downloading road for someone looking for a method to obtain files via the peer to peer networks.

Related articles

• LimeWire shut down - Here are 5 alternatives (en.onsoftware.com)
• Judge Tells LimeWire, the File-Trading Service, to Disable Its Software (nytimes.com)
• Music Sharing Service LimeWire Finally Forced to Quit (observer.com)

Blogger Labels: Limewire,Napster,Frostwire,Gnutella