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BearShare to Pay $30M to RIAA

BearShare is the latest file sharing network to collapse under RIAA pressure, BearShare has been ordered to pay $30 million dollars to avoid potential copyright infringement lawsuits from the recording industry. Free Peers Inc., which distributed the BearShare software, also agreed to cease as a business and not operate any unlicensed online music services.

As part of the settlement, Free Peers agreed to sell all technology, BearShare.com and data on users of the software to subsidiary of iMesh Inc., which closed its file swapping doors in 2004.

Since the high court’s decision, 7 file sharing networks have been forced offline. But many p2p’ers believe that the court’s decision will have little impact on the file sharing scene.

One Zeropaid.com member had to say this about the announcement; “30 million is a lot of money, but honestly, BearShare was a dieing client, they needed to move on. I guess they waited to long.”

I would assume that iMesh inc will rebrand themselves as BearShare and hope to migrate the users to a pay model. It is still unknown how much the deal was worth.

Jorge A. Gonzalez
Founder of ZeroPaid.com and various other websites. Follow me on your favorite social network. Twitter | Google Plus

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12 comments
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axlman
axlman

So what are the networks that got shutdown? As of right now bearshare is still working!

bobhss
bobhss

bearshare (as I remember) used the gnutella network so the old clients won't be "turned off" they'll continue to work. Any "new" clients would be of a paid model and not the same as the old (think Napster).

Theinfamousone
Theinfamousone

Where did bearshare get 30 million dollars? Holy crap. That's a lot of money the RIAA can keep making crappy music and they'll make more money off lawsuits than they ever did off music they've really found their niche. This 30 mill is on top of the tens of thousands of other people paying thousands of dollars to settle out of court.

Burd
Burd

I don't get it. If you follow the news stories like this one you'd think that file sharing was dead or quickly dying. However I can still get just about any file I want. Someone's lying here.

Goldmember
Goldmember

The RIAA is a criminal organisation. It must be tackled. Don't get robbed by it!

kari14
kari14

"Since the high court's decision 7 file sharing networks have been forced offline. But many p2p'ers believe that the court's decision will have little impact on the file sharing scene." I agree. What does this have to do with us. Honestly the high court ruling to shut down Bearshare won't stop Bittorrent or even Limewire fans to stop persuing free files online.

axxis
axxis

I have been a user of BearShare for the past 4 years exclusively and I can tell you that it is a very fine product despite its shortcomings. I have managed to acquire over 11000 songs for my project in part from using this application. I would hate to see it go so prematurely . . . at least before I get my project finished.

momditty
momditty

Anybody know exactly what they mean when they say they're going to sell the data on users of the software? What would you suggest to replace Bearshare? Thanks.

Afn
Afn

emule

unknownpersonage
unknownpersonage

try gnucleus or kceasy both open source clients on gnutella same as bearshare

Theinfamousone
Theinfamousone

how can they shut down gnutella clients? Are they just taking their assets or can they really force them to "shut it down" (not that I care that much).

bukakster
bukakster

If had a paid suscription to BearShare Pro or bought the software it is now very likely that the RIAA knows who you are based on your credit card information.







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