Strangely enough, the current leader in online music downloads, Apple computer, is thought to be a beneficiary of this latest move. Confused? So were we.
The thinking is that Amazon will break the ground with the first widespread online content locker, and apple will soon follow with a superior service and control of the storage devices that 69% of online music lovers already use.

Amazon told All Things Digital that it doesn’t need licenses for music storage. What is less clear is whether or not it need licenses for streaming. (In fact, the labels themselves do not seem to be clear on that either.) Insiders told Reuters that unlicensed streaming might be illegal; in 2007, a similar storage locker service was sued by EMI for copyright infringement. EMI didn’t win, but the mere threat of the label litigation seems to have kept many from pursuing lockers.

Obviously it makes great business sense for Amazon to go after this market, but the ancillary benefit could be huge. Amazon is one of just a handful of companies with the resources to stand up to the music industry on this one. Like we said, sit back and enjoy.

Another reason why it is a good idea to use Ares 2011 is the fact that you can download the shared files faster than other programs. The reason for this is that the program looks for different sources so that it can allow you to have a faster download. Furthermore, you can be sure that the downloading will be much faster because the program works behind firewalls. You also will not have to worry about configuring the firewall of your computer because the application does not require you to configure it.

Aside from the file-sharing and downloading feature of the Ares 2011 program, you should also look for the other features of the program. The program offers several features such as the built-in video and audio player, file sharing chat rooms, and a library organizer. With the video and audio player in the program, you can easily listen or watch the files that you have downloaded. Furthermore, because the application has a built-in library organizer, you can easily sort the files that you have downloaded so that you can easily find them whenever you need them.

Overall, if you are looking for a peer-to-peer downloading program, then you might want to consider using the Ares 2011. You can be sure to share different files and application to your peers easily. Furthermore, it is an open source application so you do not have to worry about its price.

Unfortunately, even though the ACS: Law business plan to extract money from people accused of downloading music and movie files from sites such as Ares 2011 is clearly not working any more, Andrew Crossley and his cronies decided to take eight defendants who had offered no defence to court.

The cases were heard at the Patents County Court office in the UK and the judge overseeing the proceedings was apparently less than impressed at the level of competency shown by ACS:Law. In fact, he described the entire file sharing case process as a “real injustice”-which will come as no surprise to anyone who has been following the antics of Mr Crossley and ACS:Law.

At least in this case, common sense prevailed as the judge threw out all eight cases after noting that there were serious issues with many of the cases relating to alleged illegal Ares 2011 music and movie downloads.

These file-sharing programs are also called P2P, or peer-to-peer programs. Unlike the old Napster network that ran all exchanges through a central server, these free music download software programs use P2P networks connects users directly to each other allowing them to download and burn free music. Both Ares and Limewire were founded in 2000, but Ares has kept a lower profile, while Limewire flourished by attracting as much attention as possible.

The site’s popularity is reflected in a survey by NDP Group, which found that LimeWire was used by 58% of people who have downloaded music from a peer-to-peer network in the year from May 2009.This compares with only 29% who used Ares, the second most popular P2P filesharing network.

Besides the high profile Limewire pursued, they also had a large corporate presence that controlled the software and served as a target for the RIAA to go after. Last week, A federal court in New York issued a permanent injunction against LimeWire late on Tuesday, ruling that the platform intentionally caused a massive scale of infringement by permitting the sharing of thousands of copyrighted works by its 50 million monthly users.

US judge Kimba Wood ruled that record companies have suffered – and will continue to suffer – irreparable harm from LimeWire’s inducement of widespread infringement of their works, adding that the potential damages were staggering.
The court also ruled that LimeWire should use all reasonable technological means to immediately cease and desist copyright infringements still taking place through applications already downloaded.

Yesterday’s court order comes after a four-year legal battle between LimeWire and the Recording Industry Association of America, the representative body for many of the world’s largest record labels which is at war with P2P programs used for downloading music such as Ares and Limewire.

In May, Wood found LimeWire liable for widespread copyright infringement. The level of damages faced by the site’s New York-based parent company, Lime Group, will be decided in January 2011. The RIAA said LimeWire, Ares, and other P2P programs have cost the music industry hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.According RIAA figures, US recorded music sales fell to $7.7bn in 2009 from $14.5bn in 1999. The rise to prominence of peer-to-peer filesharing networks is singled out as a primary factor for this decline by the RIAA.

Following Tuesday’s injunction, the RIAA said: For the better part of the last decade, LimeWire and Gorton have violated the law. The court has now signed an injunction that will start to unwind the massive piracy machine that LimeWire and Gorton used to enrich themselves immensely.

Napster, which claimed more than 100 million users at the height of its popularity at the beginning of the decade, collapsed in 2002 under the strain of a number of legal challenges. With Limewire now shuttered, this leaves Ares as the biggest player left, but it may escape the wrath of the RIAA due to the non-centralized nature of the distribution network for the software.

Way back when he was 16 years old, the boy used his father’s internet connection to upload and share the songs, but unfortunately for him, the rightsholders were monitoring illegal file sharing and he was caught out. The rightsholders took him to court and demanded damages of 300 Euros per track.

Following an unbelievable five years of being dragged through the German legal system, the Court decided to reject claims against the teenager’s father and he was cleared of all liability for damages. The complaint against the young man was upheld, but since the two music tracks were old and it could not be proven that they were made available for very long, the Court ruled that only 30 Euros per song was payable in damages.

The Court’s decision will put a great deal of pressure on future astronomical damages claims made against alleged file sharers and it seems likely that even new hits will only be worth a small amount per infringement.

Under the new Hadopi law, alleged illegal file sharers will be hunted down and identified by their IP addresses. Once they have received three warnings, they face being reported to a judge and hit with a variety of penalties, ranging from fines to disconnection of their Internet service.

If the ISPs refuse or fail to identify any accounts and subsequently provide names, addresses, emails, and phone numbers, they also face a fine of 1500 Euros per unidentified IP address. All French Internet Service Providers have been ordered to comply with the new law and the first alleged offenders look likely to receive their first fines or disconnection notices imminently.

But despite the Entertainment Industry’s efforts, there are plenty of ways for users to file share anonymously and it seems unlikely that the Hadopi law will have any real impact on file sharing in France.

A case against cvcdgo.com was filed by Columbia Tristar and a company called Egeda last year. That initial case was thrown out by a Madrid court. The two companies appealed the decision in the hopes of turning it over, but the courts came to a similar conclusion on the 9th of June this year.

The courts were apparently of the opinion that linking to the torrents or shared files did not constitute a crime in and of itself. Also since the data was on many different computers across the world, there was no way to connect the crime of copyright infringement with the things that cvcdgo.com were doing.

The judges actually likened filesharing to the ancient – and widely accepted practice – of lending books. An analogy that I’m not entirely sure about (maybe it lost something in translation), but whatever my views, it sends a strong and unambiguous signal to copyright holders: fighting your battles is going to be very hard work indeed.

Now, this makes ISPs very unhappy for two reasons. Firstly, there’s more work involved for them if copyright holders are continually asking for details of their customers. Secondly, there is a big conceptual problem in reconciling the requirements of the Ipred law with the generally accepted concept of maintaining customer privacy.

Giant ISP TeliaSonera are the latest to take such a request to the very top of Sweden’s court structure. They are currently fighting a battle against a small Swedish film production company Svensk Filmindustri. It goes without saying that the results of this legal battle will be very important indeed for the many Swedish filesharing fans who are feeling particularly sorry for themselves at this point. Let’s hope that common sense prevails for once.

Swift herself has seen the effects of the flood, though she would be the first to admit that she hasn’t been anywhere near as affected as those people who have lost homes – and lives – to the flood. She has a house in Hendersonville, and saw the tragedy unfolding first-hand.

Other stars that had been moved enough to donate and help the cause included Vince Gill, Keith Urban, Alison Krauss and Darius Rucker. It’s nice to see stars trying to make a difference like this. Whether the figures we are talking about here will be sufficient to make inroads in the horrific situation remains to be seen, but it’s a start at least.

Nashville, of course, is something of a metonym for the country music industry, with music clubs and honky tonk bars being found in abundance downtown and in surrounding areas. To see this historic institution of music drown in this way would be a sad day for musicians everywhere.

Net Neutrality

The principle behind so-called ‘net neutrality’ states that user access networks participating in the Internet should experience no restrictions on content, sites, or platforms, on the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and on the modes of communication allowed. They should also experience communication that is not unreasonably degraded by other traffic.

Unfortunately, this latest development will mean the exact opposite. Internet Service Providers like Comcast and Verizon will now be able to favor their own networks like VCast over competitors like iTunes. If, like many Americans, you use a file-sharing network like Ares Vista to download your music and video, your use and participation may be radically reduced. The effect of this stranglehold on the exchange of information will be the thwarting of completely legal data repositories exchanged over services like torrents.

Paying A Premium

Consumers can also expect to pay a premium for using file-sharing networks, as the carriers won’t be happy about the likes of Ares and iTunes riding ‘their’ wires for free. ISP’s will have the freedom to slow down popular file-sharing networks, yet still allow their own, or that of their partners, to operate freely. Where unrestricted services are offered, it is likely that they will be charged at a far higher rate. None of this is good for the consumer. After all, why should the public be penalized for accessing file-sharing networks like Ares Vista just so the ISP’s can rake in extra money on top of what they already charge?

File sharing networks, like Ares, provide access to a vast network of music, video, and picture files. Millions of satisfied users take advantage of the huge database of material available for sharing. For ISP’s to have the ability to restrict consumers’ access is a huge step backward in the arena of net neutrality. Freedom of choice to access file sharing networks should be the right of every consumer. But instead, the Comcast agreement has in effect narrowed the Internet from a six-lane highway, to a one-lane dirt track, complete with tollbooth at either end.

From Highway Back To Dirt Track

Once upon a time, the Internet was seen as a clear highway of information, freely accessible to everyone, with no restrictions. Now everyone is expected to pay a premium to use it and the freedom consumers once had to access vast networks of music, pictures, and video, has vanished into the ether. Utilities are no longer a public resource – they are now a valuable source of public revenue.

Who knows where all this will end but, ultimately, it is the consumer who will suffer and their pockets that will be hit. There is no way this can ever be seen as a positive development when Joe and Jane Public is unable to exercise his freedom of choice and use his favorite file-sharing networks without incurring a hefty financial penalty.