No, really. They are.
Well, today I was Googling myself (yes, I do that all the time, in case you were wondering), and I discovered an interesting tidbit — apparently, the RIAA is angry with me about my article “LimeWire is Quietly Resurrected: It’s Baaaack!“ (Go ahead, click it…I get paid per click.)
Said tidbit was published in various places around the ‘net — but I’ll quote TorrentFreak, because they were my original source about the resurrection of LimeWire:
“Even worse is offering a direct link to a ‘resurrected’ Limewire,” states the letter to Ziff Davis’ Vivek Shah, which goes on to quote the writer of the piece, Sarah Jacobsson Purewal.
“I went ahead and downloaded LimeWire Pirate Edition for *ahem* research purposes, and can report that it appears to be working very smoothly,” it reports Purewal as saying while going on to complain loudly that she included a link to the rogue LimeWire software.
Oooh, that’s right kids…I no longer just report the news…apparently I am the news. No, but seriously now. Piracy is bad; don’t do it.
It is true, I did include a link to the LimeWire Pirate Edition software. However, I do not think that this was any more a “road map” for internet pirates than was giving the name of the software. LimeWire Pirate Edition. Go ahead, type that into Google and tell me what the first hit is. Is it…*gasp* a direct link to the torrent file?! OMG, could it actually be that easy?!
Why yes, yes it could.
No offense, RIAA, but if you think that my linking to the software was any more “encouraging” than actually naming the software, then you don’t really understand how the internet works. (That said, my work does go through an editor, who makes the executive decision on whether or not my tongue-in-cheekness/direct links get published.)
Basically, this: I wrote an article about the resurrection of LimeWire. No where did I say that I condone music piracy. No where did I say that I used LPE to download any illegal, copyrighted files. Because I don’t, and I didn’t. So stop shooting the messenger.
Anyway, the RIAA letter was written to PC Mag — not PCWorld — and they request that PC Mag retract the article(s) and write an article in support of legal music downloading/purchasing. While, like I said, I don’t support illegal music piracy (buy it from iTunes, kids! Record it off of the radio with your tape player, just like the good ol’ days!), I also hope that PC Mag and PCWorld don’t retract the articles. I really do think that 1) the articles said nothing wrong, and 2) the RIAA’s heavy-handed pressuring needs to stop.
PC Magazine wrote an article on alternatives to LimeWire — and yes, while this may have alerted thousands of internet pirates to the existence of formerly unknown (possibly?) P2P services, it also alerted the RIAA to the existence of those services. Come on, RIAA, you’re gonna need someone to go after once the LimeWire case is finished, anyway.
Shh, don’t tell anyone…but 
Popular file-sharing software client LimeWire has been shut down. This is unfortunate — LimeWire was the last-standing file-sharing client (that’s a nice technical term for “illegal music downloading software”), after Napster and Kazaa.
