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This week, Cherlynn and Devindra dive into all of the news from Apple’s first 2022 event.
NSA once spied on your *NSYNC downloads from Kazaa
A nostalgic new cache of Edward Snowden files shows the National Security Agency (NSA) has been snooping online for a lot longer than you may think. While you were listening to Enya on your state-of-the-art iPod, the agency was looking into peer-to-peer encryption sites like Napster, Limewire and Kazaa, according to a report by The Intercept. Its crowning achievement was to crack the encryption used by at least two sites, Kazaa and eDonkey, exposing search queries and shared files.
LimeWire reaches $105 million settlement with record labels
It's been a long, slow demise for the once mighty file sharing service, but LimeWire has now taken one last big step towards being a footnote in internet history. The company reached an out of court settlement with the major record labels yesterday, which will see it and its founder, Mark Gorton, fork over $105 million to finally put an end to its longstanding dispute with the RIAA. In a statement, the RIAA said that the settlement was "another milestone in the continuing evolution of online music to a legitimate marketplace that appropriately rewards creators," while LimeWire's attorney said simply that he was "pleased that this case has concluded." You'll note, of course, that the RIAA said "another" milestone -- it's obviously still hoping for plenty more settlements or legal victories where this one came from.
LimeWire the online store fades away, LimeWire the file-sharing service soldiers on
In what will no doubt be held up as an shining example of irony in the months and years to come, it seems the RIAA has succeeded in shutting down LimeWire... but only the legal part. The LimeWire Store, which legitimately sold online music, will reportedly close on December 31st, and the site itself states that it won't be taking new customers from now on. Where, oh where will folks get their digital tunes instead? Some might go right back to filching them using LimeWire's peer-to-peer application, which hasn't actually been squashed by the injunction. Yes, a rogue group released LimeWire Pirate Edition last month, a version of the original Gnutella P2P client with all the bloat stripped out and premium functionality turned on, which is apparently receiving so welcome a reception in the file-sharing community that the Lime Group felt the need to issue a cease-and-desist to those distributing the software. Yo ho, yo ho...
Limewire ordered to disable 'all functionality,' company pledges to keep operating... somehow (video)
Today marks another sad day for the three people out there using P2P sites to share open source software and copyright-free materials -- plus all the other millions of people downloading illegal stuff. The RIAA has been involved in a legal battle against popular P2P client Limewire for years now and back in June it finally got the verdict it was looking for. A federal court found that the Lime Group, which maintains and distributes the software, did not take "meaningful efforts to mitigate infringement." Now, that same court has issued an injunction ordering that Lime Group disable "the searching, downloading, uploading, file trading and/or file distribution functionality, and/or all functionality." So, you know, pretty much turn the thing off. We're not sure when that'll happen, but we're guessing soon, and while a Lime Group representative indicated a desire to move forward and work with the record labels that seems awfully optimistic. You see, the court still hasn't decided how much the Group owes in damages, and we think that rather than working with them going forward the RIAA would prefer to put this lime in a coconut and, well... [Thanks to everyone who sent this in, image courtesy Rookie Cookie]
