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LimeWire posts

Filed under: P2P, Social Software, web 2.0

Facebook still hates P2P, pulls the pin on Limewire sharing integration

Earlier this year, The Pirate Bay debuted a nifty little feature that allowed users to post interesting torrents to their Facebook profiles. Zuckerberg's army scrambled quickly and put the kibosh on that interaction.

Limewire recently introduced a similar feature -- which Facebook has now given a swift whack with the banhammer. Limewire's Jason Herskowit told TorrentFreak that Facebook originally demanded a number of changes to the feature, and their developers complied.

A week later, and the Ministry of Facebook has decided that Limewire's integration is doubleplusungood and must be killed. According to the official Facebook statement, "Facebook respects the rights of copyright holders blah blah blah ad nauseum."

So let me get this clear: it's ok to form and join all kinds of hate groups, but you don't want us letting our friends know when we find an interesting download? That makes plenty of sense to me.

Yes, the general perception of Limewire and P2P users is that they're all after free music and stealing it willy-nilly through Bittorrent and Gnutella. However, there are plenty of legitimate uses. For example, Limewire's newer versions include private sharing for things like family photos that you want to keep semi-private.

Of course, Facebook probably doesn't want you notifying friends of your legitimate Limewire files either. They'd rather you upload those pics to their servers and tag the ever-loving crap out of them.

Pro tip: you can still just post links to taboo stuff like torrents manually - for now. Who knows, Facebook could be working on a massive blacklist so we can't even do that eventually.

[via TorrentFreak]

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Filed under: Commercial, Open Source, P2P

Limewire gets improved torrent support in new beta thanks to LibTorrent


While most of you probably prefer using a standalone torrent application, Limewire is actually the most widely-installed client in the world. In the most recent beta version, the Limewire team have greatly improved the program's torrent handling chops.

By adding LibTorrent to the mix, Limewire now includes the engine powering such apps as Halite, Deluge, Miro, Free Download Manager, and more. As a result, the new version gains support for IPv6, Mainline DHT, UDP tracking and HTTP seeding, local peer discovery, and peer exchange (PEX).

Interestingly, being the most widely-installed app doesn't translate into actual use. As TorrentFreak points out, in a survey of nearly 200,000 bittorrent peers only 43 were using Limewire.

Why so few? Limewire users are generally only after the its Gnutella downloading abilities, though as torrenting become more mainstream the program will no doubt be an attractive option for the average user.

Filed under: Internet, P2P

Littleshoot updates browser plugin, now supports torrents

Back in December 2008, Brad wrote about Littleshoot, a browser-based peer-to-peer application created by the developers of Limewire. A little over two months later, and the .90 beta release has seen several updates and the addition of one major feature: the ability to download .torrent files.

Install the Littleshoot plugin, visit any torrent site, and click on a torrent file and a new tab like the one pictured above will open in your browser. While savvy p2p-ers probably won't prefer Littleshoot to their current torrent manager, it's an excellent option for less experienced users (like the ones you provide with free troubleshooting).

Littleshoot also makes it easy to share what you're downloading on social sites, with quick links to popular ones like Twitter, Facebook, and Digg.

And don't forget, Littleshoot is also a great way to search Flickr and YouTube - you know, in case you want to check out some interesting photos or videos while your downloads finish.

The memory footprint has been reduced, at least on the Littleshoot plugin itself - it's currently using about 60mb on my Vista x64 machine, which isn't out of line with other combination Gnutella/torrent applications. Firefox, however, seems to be having some trouble coping: its ram usage is up to about 430mb.

[via TorrentFreak]

Filed under: Internet, Security, P2P

How not to configure your new Limewire install

After reading a news item on p2p data breaches today, something struck me: the average user simply doesn't understand how important it is to pay attention to the messages during a software install.

Why does it matter? For one thing, it could lead to a massive amount of private information leaking onto a file sharing network like Gnutella. Here are some examples:
  • An executive at a Manhattan production company accidentally leaked over 2,700 documents including the names, birth dates, and social security numbers of contractors, as well as scripts of episodes currently in pre-production
  • A paralegal/transcription service leaked more than 5,000 documents including medical records and confidential attorney/client information
  • A bookkeeper at a food service company leaked thousands of files including scanned driver's licenses, social security, and insurance cards
How do you avoid this? It's pretty simple, actually.

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Filed under: Audio, Internet, Freeware, Open Source, P2P, Beta

Limewire 5 beta released

Last month I took you on a visual tour of the alpha version of the upcoming Limewire v5. As announced on Limewire forums yesterday, the peer to peer app has now hit beta and is taking shape rather nicely.

The interface has been totally rebuilt from scratch, and jabber support has been added. Results from your friends will now appear above those from other P2P users. Of note for developers, the open source API has also been retooled and the wiki is being updated with new tutorials on working with it.

You can download the Limewire 5 beta version for all platforms from this page.

Filed under: Windows, Macintosh, Linux, P2P, Web

LittleShoot is LimeWire for your browser, and then some

LittleShoot
LittleShoot is a new peer to peer application from the makers of LimeWire. But unlike LimeWire and most other P2P file sharing applications, LittleShoot is browser-based. You can search for audio or video files, images, documents, or applications in your browser. And using the built in media player, you can even stream audio and video from the LittleShoot application without waiting for downloads to complete.

You do need to install a 22MB browser plugin, and LittleShoot does eat a fair amount of RAM (over 100MB during my testing). But there are a few advantages to a browser based P2P application. First, you can search LimeWire, LittleShoot, and other sources including YouTube Flickr from a single search box. And second, if you have a web browser open most of the time anyway, it's nice to be able to search for files without launching a separate application.

Because LittleShoot uses peer to peer technology, files are downloaded from multiple computers at once. And the service tries to optimize your download speed by prioritizing sources that are geographically closest to you and sources that are using the same ISP as you.

You can also "publish" files on your desktop to the Little Shoot network with just a few clicks. Just select any files on your computer that you want to share and other users will be able to start streaming or downloading them right from your computer. Once a few other users have the files on their computers they'll share the burden of serving the files to other users who want to download them.

[via Mashable]

Filed under: Internet, Commercial, Freeware, Open Source, P2P, Social Software, Beta

Limewire 5 Alpha screenshot tour


Limewire is one of the oldest filesharing programs around, and it's by far the most popular. The Limewire development team continues to work hard on version 5, which promises to bring some very big changes to the application. After taking a look at Wired's write up of the Alpha version, I decided to download it and see what all the fuss was about.

Remember, the gallery images and download I'm linking to are pre-beta. If you're not an early adopter or interested in testing potentially buggy software, don't download this version.

Let's take a look, shall we?

Read more →

Filed under: Windows, Macintosh, Freeware, P2P

Cabos is Limewire for Minimalists


We've tried plenty of Gnutella clients that just aren't any good, and usually end up back with Frostwire or Limewire by default. Thankfully, Cabos has an excellent alternative for Windows and Mac users.

Cabos doesn't support torrents, and it doesn't have a built in media player, but who needs that anyway? Most of us have favorite apps for handling those files anyways, and Limewire probably isn't either of them. It simply searches the Gnutella network, displays your results, lets you filter and sort them six ways from Sunday, and downloads them quickly. It even offers basic iTunes integration.

There's no lime green splashed around the UI, just a tranquil, muted gray, and 21 languages are supported. It's totally ad-free and there are no nags - Cabos just does what you want it to and doesn't get in the way.

Filed under: Audio, Internet, P2P

LimeWire digital music store launches

LimeWire Store
About half a year after announcing plans to open an online music store, LimeWire has followed through on its threat promise to go at least partially legit. The LimeWire store features about half a million tracks from a diverse set of mostly independent or minor label artists that you may or may not have heard of. There are a few big names featured on the front page, like Dolly Parton, Josh Rouse, Bell X1, and Gloria Gaynor. We really never thought we'd be writing a sentence with all four of those artists in it, but there you go. The site is currently in beta and the LimeWire team says it has plans to add "thousands of tracks daily."

All tracks are available as 256kbps MP3 files. Pricing is $.99 for a single track. Or you can get 25 downloads per month for $9.99, 50 for $14.99 or 75 for $19.99. At that last price, you essentially get 75 songs for $.27 each, assuming you actually download 75 tracks each month.

Currently the LimeWire store is completely separate from the LimeWire peer to peer file sharing application. There's no way to use the LimeWire client to speed up downloads, but the company does plan to offer some sort of integration in the future. How they plan to prevent users from buying songs and then sharing them with the world for free remains to be seen.

[via P2P Blog]

Filed under: Audio, Internet, P2P

Lime Wire to launch digital music store

Lime WireBefore BitTorrent was all the rage in peer to peer file sharing, you may remember that the easiest way to illegally obtain music, movies, and other files was through file sharing programs like Lime Wire, BearShare, Morpheus. You know, the children of Napster.

Of course, now Napster's gone legit and sells music. It looks like Lime Wire is looking to follow suit. The company has announced plans to open a music download store.

The store will be web-based, although you'll be able to access the site from links in Lime Wire's file-sharing software. So far the company has signed up IRIS Distribution and Nettwerk Productions. Content will be available as MP3s, and customers will be able to buy individual songs and albums or pay a monthly fee for subscription plans.

[via coolfer]

Filed under: News, P2P, Social Software

Morpheus p2p network loses in court

MorpheusAnother one bites the dust folks, well not yet. Morpheus, the p2p file sharing network owned by StreamCast, lost its case in court. The network, like many others is now in danger of being shut down because of copyright infringement charges. LimeWire was similarly sued by the RIAA in August, as well as Grokster, Napster, Kazaa, and many others. Some of these networks have been shut-down, had to shut-down, or have regrouped and come back reborn like Napster. Morpheus still holds out hope for some sort of appeal to work in their favor, but at this point the prospects don't look too good, at least from my small corner of the great and powerful blogosphere. Where Morpheus ends up remains to be seen, and despite their court loss, there seems to be some light at the end of the tunnel at least for consumers, with a few studios and companies starting to see that DRM-less music may be the way to boost sales.

Filed under: P2P

RIAA sues Limewire

RIAA sues LimewireLime Group LLC, the company behind peer to peer application LimeWire, sued today in federal court by the RIAA for damages including $150,000 per occurance of copyright infringing files. The complaint seeks damages on the grounds that LimeWire, and thus Lime Group LLC, facillitated the trade of copywritten music between users and profited as a result of LimeWire's failure to "block" copyright protected material.

Lime Group LLC has so far refused comment.

Lime Group was threatened last September, along with a host of other P2P application developers, with legal action if the company failed to comply with RIAA demands to either shut down, successfully filter all copyright protected material or drop the open peer to peer topology for a licensed content model approved by the RIAA.

KaZaa recently settled a similar case for $115 million, others such as WinMX and Bearshare have shut down. Qtrax, another less known but veteran name in peer to peer is preparing to offer a licensed peer to peer model that would comply with the RIAA's demands.

[Via Digg]

Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Windows, Macintosh

LimeWire Pro - Today's Free File?

limewire pro freeI put a question at the end of that title because I'm not sure if this is really kosher or not. Let your conscience be your guide. It's pretty obvious that, using p2p, you can get the Pro version of LimeWire (or nearly any other app) for free. But using the GPL to allow for the pro version to download for free anyway? Pretty obvious as well, since the pro version is open source, you could just download the source, compile it, and there ya go. Maybe the folks at LimeWire should have considered the terms of the GPL before charging for their app... Or maybe not. Seems like they have a right to earn a living making the application. Personally I don't like LimeWire, but most of my students use it. So yeah, Webby's World has the details on acquiring LimeWire Pro for free, along with a little jab at Java (which I'd agree with a commenter, is NOT generally buggy). Or you could be brave and go to this freaky site where they claim you can just download the thing for free. Free? Maybe. Guilt free? I'll let you decide.

[Via digg]

Filed under: Internet

2005's file-sharing winners and losers

RIAASlyck News has put together a list of their picks for the biggest winners and losers in file-sharing for 2005. File sharing's winners? BitTorrent, Apple, LimeWire, The Pirate Bay, and open source. The losers? Sony-BMG, Kazaa owners Sharman Networks, Grokster, pay P2P, and, of course, perennial loser the RIAA. I'd personally add to the winners list Fiona Apple, whose new album, which is being acclaimed as one of the year's best, would never have seen a release this year without the attention its P2P leak garnered.

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