Blames LimeWire for the program’s release, saying that whomever developed the program and the site it was formerly hosted on was "either formerly or presently a Lime Wire employee," and has convinced a court to force LimeWire to turn over the names of "all current and former employees" that "would have been capable" of creating the program.
The RIAA has accused LimeWire of not complying with the terms of U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood’s injunction ordering LimeWire to disable the “searching, downloading, uploading, file trading and/or file distribution functionality, and/or all functionality” of the famed file-sharing program.
The injunction capped a four year legal battle against Limewire and its creator, Mark Gorton, in which Judge Wood found that both had committed copyright infringement, engaged in unfair competition, and induced others to commit copyright infringement.
A hacker by the name of Meta Pirate (Google cache) turned the injunction upside down when he released LimeWire Pirate Edition whereby "all dependencies on LimeWire LLC’s servers have been removed, all remote settings have been disabled, the Ask toolbar has been unbundled, and all features of LimeWire PRO have been activated for free."
“LimeWire Pirate Edition should work better than the last functioning version of LimeWire (5.5.10), and it should keep working for longer," added Meta Pirate "There’s no adware or spyware: the piratical monkeys are doing this for the benefit of the community.”
LimeWire issued a demand asking whomever’s responsible to "cease and desist" from "using the LimeWire software, name, or trademark in order to upload or download copyrighted works," but it wasn’t enough for the RIAA who has accused LimeWire of failing to comply with the court ordered injunction.
"Defendants have demonstrated in no uncertain terms that they either will not or cannot do what the injunction commands," says the RIAA in court filing. "A Receiver appointed by and answerable to the Court is the only way to ensure that the Injunction will be respected and implemented."
The RIAA believes that Meta Pirate is likely "either formerly or presently a Lime Wire employee," and has convinced the court to order LimeWire to divulge a list of any employee, past or present, who may have been capable of creating LimeWire Pirate Edition.
However, Meta Pirate insists that those responsible for creating the program "are not associated in any way with Lime Wire LLC," and merely used existing open source LimeWire codebase.
Amidst it all LimeWire contends that it is indeed complying with the terms of the injunction, and is "not involved in the distribution of LimeWire Pirate Edition" nor has it ever even "used the name Meta Pirate."
Either way, it’s not clear why the RIAA would waste additional resources going after LimeWire Pirate Edition. LimeWire LLC. and Groton already face tens of millions of dollars or more in damages, and there’s no way to put the proverbial genie back in the bottle. LimeWire Pirate Edition is here to stay.
Stay tuned.
I've been interested in P2P since the early, high-flying days of Napster and KaZaA. I believe that analog copyright laws are ill-suited to the digital age, and that art and culture shouldn't be subject to the whims of international entertainment industry conglomerates. Twitter | Google Plus
