AfterDawn: News

LimeWire lays off 29 percent of staff

Last week we reported that LimeWire, once the world's most popular P2P client, had been officially shut down, following a four-year legal battle against the record industry.

A New York federal court issued a permanent injunction against the site, ruling that LimeWire caused a "massive scale of infringement" by intentionally giving users a platform to share millions of unauthorized music tracks.



At its peak, LimeWire was seeing 50 million monthly users.

Following the ruling, LimeWire has had to lay off 29 of its 100 staff members.

Curiously, the company will keep the other 71 working on an unknown new music service.

Says CEO George Searle, via AllThingsD: "Following the court-ordered injunction, we reduced our work force to extend our runway for bringing our new music service to market. Letting go of colleagues is never easy. If we could have brought about another solution, we would have."

The upcoming service is dubbed "Grapevine."

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 1 Nov 2010 20:59

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• 15 comments

• ROMaster2

  They're pulling a Napster

  1.11.2010 21:02 #1

• biglo30

  Originally posted by ROMaster2: They're pulling a Napster lol I was about to say the same thing, start of illegal and come back trying to go legit.
  

  1.11.2010 21:13 #2

• foxeyes (unverified)

  Not a great loss as most of it was just viruses and crap

  1.11.2010 21:20 #3

• biglo30

  Originally posted by foxeyes: Not a great loss as most of it was just viruses and crap I see a lot of people posting that but i personally never got a virus when I used this program a few times for some songs I wanted to hear. Once you know what your doing it would be a problem, only noobs always complain of viruses (only except may be to movies which I never tried so could be that lol).
  

  1.11.2010 21:49 #4

• GryphB

  It's nice to see limewire finally go down :)

  1.11.2010 22:13 #5

• hikaricor

  *Hetfield Voice* LIMEWIRE BADD!!!1 *Hetfield Voice*

  1.11.2010 22:17 #6

• KillerBug

  Originally posted by biglo30: Originally posted by foxeyes: Not a great loss as most of it was just viruses and crap I see a lot of people posting that but i personally never got a virus when I used this program a few times for some songs I wanted to hear. Once you know what your doing it would be a problem, only noobs always complain of viruses (only except may be to movies which I never tried so could be that lol). I never got viruses dl'ing MP3s either...it was the apps that were full of viruses for the most part. As for the MP3s, they had the wrong names, many of them were reencoded to 320k from 56k, some were normalized, others were not...it was a real mess trying to get a single CD together and sounding something like it should.
  
  Limewire sucked...it was a the best solution for a very short time for a very limited task, and it hasn't had a good use in years.

  2.11.2010 00:53 #7

• mac-n-cheese (unverified)

  Originally posted by KillerBug: Originally posted by biglo30: Originally posted by foxeyes: Not a great loss as most of it was just viruses and crap I see a lot of people posting that but i personally never got a virus when I used this program a few times for some songs I wanted to hear. Once you know what your doing it would be a problem, only noobs always complain of viruses (only except may be to movies which I never tried so could be that lol). I never got viruses dl'ing MP3s either...it was the apps that were full of viruses for the most part. As for the MP3s, they had the wrong names, many of them were reencoded to 320k from 56k, some were normalized, others were not...it was a real mess trying to get a single CD together and sounding something like it should.
  
  Limewire sucked...it was a the best solution for a very short time for a very limited task, and it hasn't had a good use in years. dude, I never got a virus from LimeWire either. I only used if for music though and sometimes woudl get a crappy recording but I'd usuallt just go back and re-download a different one. I hate to see my free music source get shut down just because the music industry demand I buy a complete CD because I like only a few songs on it. I don't know what you tried to get from LimeWire that made it suck for you but I loved it.

  2.11.2010 01:12 #8

• MeMickey (unverified)

  I don't get it...you can share ANY file on limewire, including movies, tv shows, and pictures...so why aren't movie studios, tv networks, and artists/photographers getting mad too?

  2.11.2010 01:29 #9

• DoomLight

  goodbye VirusWire
  

  2.11.2010 14:13 #10

• biglo30

  Originally posted by mac-n-cheese: Originally posted by KillerBug: Originally posted by biglo30: Originally posted by foxeyes: Not a great loss as most of it was just viruses and crap I see a lot of people posting that but i personally never got a virus when I used this program a few times for some songs I wanted to hear. Once you know what your doing it would be a problem, only noobs always complain of viruses (only except may be to movies which I never tried so could be that lol). I never got viruses dl'ing MP3s either...it was the apps that were full of viruses for the most part. As for the MP3s, they had the wrong names, many of them were reencoded to 320k from 56k, some were normalized, others were not...it was a real mess trying to get a single CD together and sounding something like it should.
  
  Limewire sucked...it was a the best solution for a very short time for a very limited task, and it hasn't had a good use in years. dude, I never got a virus from LimeWire either. I only used if for music though and sometimes woudl get a crappy recording but I'd usuallt just go back and re-download a different one. I hate to see my free music source get shut down just because the music industry demand I buy a complete CD because I like only a few songs on it. I don't know what you tried to get from LimeWire that made it suck for you but I loved it. Yeah like killerbug said, most of the viruses that people got from this program where those loaded in the hundreds of fake applications that where shared on there. The applications where the main target because they were executable files. With that said it will be missed for the music sharing tho.
  

  2.11.2010 20:44 #11

• Mez

  It has it good points. many collectors do not want albums they only want tunes that they like. For that LW is OK as long as you are careful. That holds true with any freebee gotten anywhere especially apps. Torrents & newsgroups are safer but not safe.
  
  I haven't used it in many years only because most smart users stopped using it. Like Killerbug stated you have a good deal of unreliable music. Bad tag info, high bit rates with a low bit rate source. But not everyone that uses it is a moron. There is still great music to be gotten that way. The cyber cops have moved away from LW and moved on to bigger threats. It looks like lack of interest has done what the cyber cops couldn't do.
  
  We had a user who may have actually put viruses into music file extensions. There was no real intent to deceive. There were no bit rates posted and the file was too big to be real. The hacker only wanted to infect morons with a bot net. Anyone smarter than that was a potential problem.

  3.11.2010 12:48 #12

• xaznboitx

  i use frostwire anyway

  3.11.2010 14:01 #13

• Mez

  Originally posted by xaznboitx: i use frostwire anyway No difference except for maybe a bit smarter user set. The problem is it is just so easy to do any more can do it and does.

  3.11.2010 14:47 #14

• annoyed

  Originally posted by MeMickey: I don't get it...you can share ANY file on limewire, including movies, tv shows, and pictures...so why aren't movie studios, tv networks, and artists/photographers getting mad too? you've got to think of poor smug faced simon cowell,how will he be able to afford a brand house in malibu, or new 3" cuban heels.
  

  ged

  4.11.2010 09:41 #15