Supreme Court shuts down LimeWire

November 18, 2010 • Hamzah Sami, Staff Writer  
Filed under News

On October 27th, LimeWire, a popular website where free music could be downloaded was shut down by the Supreme Court after a court case that lasted four years. This decision was made due to a lack of income for music companies dating from 1999 to the present day. Corey Thomason (11) had no opinion towards this decision saying, “I never used it before so it did not really bother me.” He also added, “LimeWire has been going on for so long and just now, the Supreme Court [cancels it], that’s interesting.” With this answer, Thomason raises the issue about whether other websites performing the same duties as LimeWire will be stopped.

Jason Wang (11) thought even though it is illegal to download music for free, “record companies should release their music [and be] prepared for the fact that their products will leak over the Internet.” He later stated that “LimeWire is not the only way to get music for free. Personally I think there is [no point in] shutting [it] down.” With the World Wide Web becoming more technologically advanced daily problems like these will be reoccurring.

Kevin Yang (11) also believes that it was unnecessary to shut LimeWire down. He stated, “Free downloading of their music, all of these ways are successfully making musicians famous. [Without it] who would want to pay money to listen to music.” Later he explained that “there are many other sites that do the same thing even websites from other countries.”

Despite that, this problem has begun to grow over the years. Thomason does not expect Congress to pass a law banning the free distribution of music, because “all music is the property of the music companies so I do not believe that they will enforce laws to end the illegal downloading.” Despite the creation of these laws, it seems that the Supreme Court still has some unfinished work to complete over the next few years.

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