CBS Interactive, CNET Sued Over LimeWire Distribution

[GFY_Live]

LOS ANGELES?FilmOn.com founder Alki David really hates CBS. Any doubt of his utter contempt for the company can be quickly dispelled by a visit to the ?cbsyousuck? page on FilmOn.com that explains why ?the duplicity of CBS beggars belief.?

In fact, David hates Viacom/CBS so much that he brought together a group of music artists to sue the company today in Los Angeles. The accusation is that CBS, through its CBS Interactive subsidiaries CNET.com and Download.com, profited from the downloading of huge numbers of copies of LimeWire peer-to-peer file-sharing software through its sites, ultimately accounting for over 95 percent of all LimeWire downloads. The plaintiffs include Alki as well as a consortium of music artists, among them Detron Bendross of 2 Live Crew, Rome, Diamond Blue of Pretty Ricky, Trisco Smith from Force MDs and Coldhard representing Crucial Conflict.

rest of the story:

http://business.avn.com/articles/leg...on-435083.html

[d-null]

that is a stretch, maybe they should be sueing Apple and Microsoft for the fact that their operating systems were used to run the computers that people were pirating their music on

[d-null]

congrats on the 10,021 btw

[rowan]

Originally Posted by d-null

congrats on the 10,021 btw

Hmm yes, 10k posts in 1 month... but only 19 showing in search. Who/what is GFY Live?

[Barefootsies]

Maybe gideongallery is for hire.

[gideongallery]

Originally Posted by Barefootsies

Maybe gideongallery is for hire.

why would these guys hire me i agree with cnet position

limewire is a tool that can be used for both fair use and infringement

they should be going after the infringer leaving the program and those with a fair use right alone.

[Agent 488]

limewire = osama.

[SmokeyTheBear]

Originally Posted by gideongallery

limewire is a tool that can be used for both fair use and infringement

they should be going after the infringer leaving the program and those with a fair use right alone.

ak-47's can be used legally or used to kill , using your logic it would be ok for mcdonalds to give out ak-47's with every happy meal.

[TheDoc]

Originally Posted by gideongallery

why would these guys hire me i agree with cnet position

limewire is a tool that can be used for both fair use and infringement

they should be going after the infringer leaving the program and those with a fair use right alone.

Your argument might have a leg to stand if more than 1% of the people actually used it for legal p2p trades.

[gideongallery]

Originally Posted by TheDoc

Your argument might have a leg to stand if more than 1% of the people actually used it for legal p2p trades.

don't use limewire personally the torrents are all i use


but canadians like me pay a piracy tax so our supreme court has ruled downloading music for p2p is 100% legal

tv shows currently represent more than 57% of all torrent traffic and that timeshifting.

so a majority of p2p trades is fair use (and therefore legal)

[JFK]

Originally Posted by rowan

Hmm yes, 10k posts in 1 month... but only 19 showing in search. Who/what is GFY Live?

I noticed that as well, the last time they posted, but didnt get an answer

[SmokeyTheBear]

Originally Posted by gideongallery

tv shows currently represent more than 57% of all torrent traffic and that timeshifting.

if they actually paid for the tv show the first time, lets just pretend the tooth fairy & timeshifting are legal and that 50% of all downloaders are also cable subscribers. that puts you much under your mythical "most"

[Theo]

We met with Alki David few months ago where he revealed us his plans on going after CBS and CNET. Some of the things we discussed are included in his today's blog post:

"CNET locked down nearly exclusive distribution deals with Limewire, Kazaa Morpheus, Grockster and most of the other notorious P2P clients. CNET published frequent tests with the software against known copyrighted songs. Of course, with Live Links right to the software downloads. All I can guess from this is you think kids and single moms should be the ones sued because they did the downloading? Like that single mom in Texas that appealed a 1.5 million dollar fine for downloading 24 songs. Look it up on Google.

They had articles that even suggested the best methods for ? Breaking Copyright Laws Big-Time? and they offered paid versions of Limewire and others that were ad free. They had deals to get paid for each download.

Why are people so supportive of the worlds largest Media conglomerate that is One of the six MPAA members through Paramount Pictures, yet it is the MPAA too that is suing people for using the software an actual member distributed to them with the instructions to use it."

[gideongallery]

Originally Posted by SmokeyTheBear

if they actually paid for the tv show the first time, lets just pretend the tooth fairy & timeshifting are legal and that 50% of all downloaders are also cable subscribers. that puts you much under your mythical "most"

you might want to look at the top 25 downloaded shows more than 80% are comming from free broadcast to the air tv stations

in the US 97% of the population has at least 1 tv

so cutting it down to 50% who suscribe to premium cable only is disqualifying a shit load of legal timeshifters.


BTW canada is not the only country with a piracy tax that effectively turns p2p downloads into nothing more than legally licienced contract.

so ignoring that line is also significantly reducing the legal downloads too.

[Due]

Originally Posted by TheDoc

Your argument might have a leg to stand if more than 1% of the people actually used it for legal p2p trades.

p2p is a very common method of distributing open source software since there is almost zero hosting costs involved then, also it's an extremely popular way of seeding promotional content (the user may believe he is downloading the full videos / clips / songs / albums or what not)

[TheDoc]

Originally Posted by gideongallery

don't use limewire personally the torrents are all i use


but canadians like me pay a piracy tax so our supreme court has ruled downloading music for p2p is 100% legal

tv shows currently represent more than 57% of all torrent traffic and that timeshifting.

so a majority of p2p trades is fair use (and therefore legal)

We aren't talking about you.

We aren't talking about Canadians.

We aren't talking about timeshifting which covers personal use/copies and not sharing of copyrighted materials which is not covered by timeshifting.

In America the majority of p2p 'trading' has already been proven illegal, therefore is illegal.

[TheDoc]

Originally Posted by Due

p2p is a very common method of distributing open source software since there is almost zero hosting costs involved then, also it's an extremely popular way of seeding promotional content (the user may believe he is downloading the full videos / clips / songs / albums or what not)

Open source software would be part of that 1% legit use. Most people aren't on p2p looking for open source software, most are looking for movies, music, games, etc and the intent is to get it through pirated methods, if it's seeded they simply keep looking until a source can be found that is distributing it illegally.

[gideongallery]

Originally Posted by TheDoc

We aren't talking about you.

We aren't talking about Canadians.

We aren't talking about timeshifting which covers personal use/copies and not sharing of copyrighted materials which is not covered by timeshifting.

In America the majority of p2p 'trading' has already been proven illegal, therefore is illegal.

97% of the us population has at least 1 tv

80% of top 25 tv show downloads are from publically broadcast stations (NBC, CBS, ABC, etc)

and 57% of all torrent traffic falls in this catagory

those people are basically using torrents like a vcr.

The US supreme court in the cable vision ruled that timeshifting in a cloud is legal.

the only thing that missing from making 100% legal is for someone to successfully argue that sharing multiple non working pieces of copyright material is not the same as sharing one complete working copy.


that arguement will come.

currently since that issue has not been successfully decided one way or another the best statement you can make is that timeshifting using the torrents MAY be illegal (in the US)

in other countries like canada which have made the ruling that one download != 1 lost sale.

the fact that i would have simply used pvr if the torrents didn't exist/ and i already paid for the content thru my cable bill. is more than enough to eliminate the liablity.