The current version of LimeWire is 4.9.30. As of this version, no impediments exist that disallows the free sharing of information. The occassional nag screen may pop up once and a while, however this is little more than a mere nuisance for the average user.

Approximately 3 to 5 days ago, LimeWire developers began working on two new branches, cc_reverify_interval-branch and cc-publish-branch. The code in the first branch works to verify that every file shared has a license. If this is not the case, the file will not be shared. The second branch is for publishing one's own work without a license. According to the release notes, individuals can attach a Creative Commons license if the work is either their own or have permission to distribute the work.

The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) stated the US Supreme Court ruling would have a chilling effect on technological development. This certainly appears true for commercial development; however LimeWire’s saving grace is its open source nature. LimeWire may soon block the trading of unlicensed files, but LimeWire variants will continue to exist.

The music and movie industries are giving people who have swapped songs and other copyrighted material over the Internet a new way to repent for their illicit ways.

A free program released Thursday, called Digital File Check, will uninstall or disable file-sharing programs on people's computers. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), an affiliate of the Recording Industry Association of America in London, helped develop the software along with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

The software, available for download, will also search computers for music and movies and remove any illegal copies, the group said.

Hollywood has chosen speak like a pirate day to announce that six studios will be uniting to finance a multimillion-dollar research laboratory to find new ways to foil movie pirates.

The non-profit lab will be called Motion Picture Laboratories, or MovieLabs, and will start up later in the year.

It will have a budget of $30 million to spend over two years and is based on the perception the IT industry is not doing enough to tackle pirates.

MovieLabs will be looking at ways to jam camcorders, detect and block P2P transfers on campus and business networks.

It will build spyware for p2p networks and look at better ways to prevent home and personal digital networks from being tapped into by unauthorised users.

The Recording Industry Ass. of America (RIAA) has told seven P2P software companies to get with the programme - or face the consequences.

The organisation, infamous for the thousands of lawsuits it has issued against alleged file-sharers, said it has asked the firms to shut down their networks or implement RIAA-approved anti-piracy measures.

The verdict reversed judgements made at the District Court and Court of Appeal levels, which were founded on the precedent established in a landmark case brought in the 1980s by the movie industry against Sony. Back then, the Japanese giant prevailed, by showing its video recorders had plenty of uses beyond illegally copying movies. This time round, the P2Pers made the same claims, but the Supreme Court maintained that there were substantial differences between the two cases, so the Sony precedent does not apply.

The case now returns to the lower court, which must now re-consider the movie industry's complaint against Grokster and StreamCast in the light of the Supremes' decision.

An Australian court has ruled that the popular file-swapping program Kazaa urged its users to breach copyright.

The Federal Court ordered Kazaa's owners, Sharman Networks, to modify the software to prevent further piracy.

Although the ruling is only enforceable in Australia, the record industry has hailed it as a victory that would resonate around the world.

Kazaa's owners were ordered to modify the software within two months to include filters designed to stop the sharing of copyright material.

"The court has ruled the current Kazaa system illegal," said record industry spokesman Michael Speck said outside the court.

The Rolling Stones' first studio album in eight years has been illegally posted on the internet for download, a British newspaper claims.

A Bigger Bang is due for release today but illegal downloading from several websites could cost the legendary British group a fortune in lost sales, the paper said.

A spokeswoman for the Stones' record company EMI told The Times of London: "The first low-quality files of new Rolling Stones music were found illegally posted on Monday, the same day we began making the new album available for consumers to listen to via radio and streaming."

"It is actually a major achievement to keep an album secure until this close to the commercial release date."

The entire 16-track album is available to listen to on the Stones' website.

Hollywood studios filed a new round of lawsuits against file swappers on Thursday, for the first time using peer-to-peer companies' own data to track down individuals accused of trading movies online.

The group previously said in February that a Texas court had ordered that the server logs of one big site, called LokiTorrent, be turned over to Hollywood investigators. An MPAA spokeswoman said that none of Thursday's suits were related to that action, however.

"Internet movie thieves be warned: You have no friends in the online community when you are engaging in copyright theft," MPAA Senior Vice President John Malcom said in a statement.

Ever since the RIAA started filing lawsuits directly against people for sharing music online, we've wondered why no one fought back and took the case to court in the US.

Earlier this year, a US judge, trying to clean up some of the details in the old, old, old Napster case, also specifically noted that making files available is not the equivalent of distributing -- which is what all the RIAA cases charge.

However, Broadband Reports points to the case of one woman who is fighting back and says she's willing to go to court to fight the charges the RIAA has filed against her, because they're not right. She points out that she had never even heard of Kazaa. The details suggest that perhaps a friend of one of her kids was responsible for the file sharing -- but, that certainly suggests that the RIAA got the wrong person. While the internet account may be in this woman's name, the burden should be on the RIAA to prove who did the actual sharing -- not who owns the account. It's the same reason why they can't sue an ISP for someone doing unauthorized file sharing on their system.

The Recording Industry Ass. of America has acknowledged that P2P file-sharing is less of a threat to music sales than bootleg CDs.

The RIAA's chief executive, Mitch Bainwol, last week said music fans acquire almost twice as many songs from illegally duplicated CDs as from unauthorised downloads, Associated Press reports.

The RIAA's favoured solution appears to be copy-protected CDs, which are gradually spreading throughout the music CD market. This approach "is an answer to the problem that clearly the marketplace is going to see more of," Bainwol told the news agency.

When we reviewed Macrovision's then state-of-the-art CDS-300 version 7 copy-protection scheme last year, while it happily imposed restrictions on Windows users, the sample tracks we were challenged to rip where easily converted from CD audio to MP3 on a PowerBook G4 running iTunes. Right now, the solution to copy-protection appears simple: buy a Mac.

The International Federation of Phonographic Industries said that 180 million single tracks were downloaded legally in the first six months of the year, compared to 57 million tracks in the first half of 2004 and 157 million for the whole of last year.

So you might want to credit some of this growth to the massive success of things like the iPod, or to fact that the general user out there is warming up to online sales as more and more people give it a shot, but according to the IFPI, you'd be wrong. Nay, the upswing is the result of more broadband lines being installed across the globe, and of course, the recording industry's fight against file sharing.

"We are now seeing real evidence that people are increasingly put off by illegal file-sharing and turning to legal ways of enjoying music online," said John Kennedy, the IFPI's chairman. "Whether it's the fear of getting caught breaking the law, or the realization that many networks could damage your home PC, attitudes are changing, and that is good news for the whole music industry."

But yeah, it's the lawsuits. It's not access, or convenience, or a market starting up. It's the lawsuits. And hey, since it's the lawsuits creating all of this business, why don't we pass more laws to make business even better. See, I could work for the RIAA, no?