LimeWire Works to Block Unlicensed Material

Found on Slyck on Sunday, 25 September 2005
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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.

They can't really believe that this will make sharing all files impossible. Limewire is published under the GNU license, and it won't take that long until fixes are out. Someone just needs to "repair" a few subroutines.