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In response to the reopening of an investigation into inadvertent file sharing with peer-to-peer software, an executive for Lime Wire told Congress in a letter on Friday that the new version of the program is "the most secure file-sharing software available."
The main investigative committee in the U.S. House of Representatives reopened a probe of Lime Wire and other peer-to-peer file-sharing companies last week, citing data breaches blamed on the technology.
In February, a security firm alleged that information about President Obama's helicopter was breached via P2P. There have also been reports of inadvertent exposure of consumer financial data and medical records over peer-to-peer, according to the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
In a letter sent Friday to the Committee and congressional members, Mark Gorton, the chairman of Lime Wire parent Lime Group, said LimeWire 5, released on December 8, was designed to eliminate inadvertent file sharing in response to privacy concerns.
LimeWire 5 by default does not share documents, it automatically un-shares documents a user may have shared using an older version of the software, and by default will not share documents regardless of whether they exist in a folder that has been shared or whether a user shared the document in an older version, said Gorton's letter, a copy of which was obtained by CNET News.
"In short, there is absolutely no way to access a LimeWire 5 user's documents unless that user affirmatively elects to make them available," he wrote. "LimeWire 5 does not share any file of any type without explicit permission from the user."
Meanwhile, the company has no specific information about the reports of data breaches that the Committee had mentioned, Gorton said.
The Committee initially launched its probe into inadvertent file-sharing with P2P in mid-2007 and had called Gorton and others to testify.
Meanwhile, another congressional subcommittee is planning to hold a hearing on P2P technology. The House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection has scheduled a hearing for Monday at 2 p.m. EDT on the "Informed P2P User Act," introduced by California Rep. Mary Bono Mack, a Republican, her office said.
Scheduled to testify at the hearing are the Federal Trade Commission, the Business Software Alliance, the Center for Democracy & Technology, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Distributed Computing Industry Association, Tiversa, and the Progress and Freedom Foundation.
Lime Group's letter assures Congress that its new peer-to-peer software eliminates inadvertent file-sharing.
(Credit: Lime Group)Despite intense popularity of the BitTorrent system, Gnutella clients aren't dead yet. LimeWire 5 for Windows, Mac, and Linux keeps its hand in the file-sharing pot by borrowing your Google contacts to create a friend network and a snazzy redesign that surfaces the most important information first.
LimeWire still has ads that pop up into the main interface.
(Credit: CNET Networks)If you're not a fan of the Gnutella file-sharing protocols, I doubt this will be enough to grab your eye. Torrents run faster, depending on the number of seeders, and torrent content is rarely faked in the way that plagues the Gnutella networks. If LimeWire lights you up, though, there's probably enough here to excite you, and definitely enough to make it worth upgrading to.
The new interface is very Web 2.0ish, with two search bars on top and two left-side navigation bars. The uppermost search bar is the global search that scans what everybody is sharing over the P2P network, while the secondary one on the right searches your library.
A new sharing options window should help new people from accidentally oversharing.
(Credit: CNET Networks)The sidebars are set up in a similar way. Both are on the left, with the outer one offering three options: your library, the global P2P network, and your friends. Click on My Library and your inner sidebar shows your collection of music, movies, and documents.
The P2P Network option shows what you're uploading and downloading, while the Friends option is a hard tack toward social networking. It lets you share your library specifically with your Google/Jabber and LiveJournal contacts, which you can import. Search results themselves can be presented in both the new Web 2.0-style that surfaces just the most relevant information, with an Information button to dive deeper or the "classic" spreadsheet view.
The Advanced Tools feature is also new, letting power users drill down and get highly specific information about who they're connected to. This basically takes the kind of information that torrent clients like uTorrent have been surfacing for years, and applies it to the Gnutella world in a clean layout. This data includes IP addresses, bandwidth, the program being used, and its version.
The redo of the Options window as a whole should make the program safer by not confusing newbies.
(Credit: CNET Networks)LimeWire 5 makes it easier to see which files you're adding and to configure library-scanning behavior. From the Tools menubar, go to Options. Big icons greet the user, making it easier to discern what you're changing. Once you've chosen a directory to add, you can configure LimeWire so it adds only specific file types from that directory, or only adds the files currently in it. This can restrict mixed-use directories from accidental oversharing, as well as prevent files added to the directory from automatically becoming available to all.
The new features and overall functionality make this by far the most mature version of LimeWire to date. Despite the typical performance flaws found in all file-sharing clients and the need for users to be exceedingly cautious with both sharing and downloading, LimeWire 5 continues to offer solid performance and good looks across the board.
Torrenting might be all the rage, but that hasn't stopped Gnutella client LimeWire from a major update driven by an interface redo and Web 2.0 features.
LimeWire and other Gnutella-based programs are notorious for mislabeled and intentionally mistagged files, it's true. But some of LimeWire 5's social-networking features--such as creating lines of communication and file sharing between friends based on your Google/Jabber contacts--indicate that Gnutella's not dead yet.
LimeWire 5.0 allows users to share files with friends on any Jabber-compatible system, as well as to have search results incorporate files from the LimeWire store.
(Credit: Lime Wire)LAS VEGAS--Get ready for the collision of social networking and peer-to-peer file sharing.
With the beta release of LimeWire 5.0 (download for Windows| Mac), which was announced at the Consumer Electronics Show here, the popular P2P service is incorporating a social element that will enable people using Jabber-compatible services like Gmail to share files with friends on their buddy lists. Lime Wire calls this a "personal sharing network."
The idea, said Lime Wire CEO George Searle, is to add trusted context to user searches for content, given that people are more likely to want--and feel comfortable with--content from people they know.
Additionally, Searle explained that the new social features of LimeWire--which has 70 million monthly unique users and more than 5 billion queries a month--will enable people to choose whether to make files available to the public at large, or just to their friends and family.
In many ways, this is much like many other content-sharing systems. But to Searle, adding a social component to LimeWire means making what is already an extremely popular service more personal to many users.
Essentially, the way the new feature works is that users will be able to decide whether to make files--photographs, for example--available to anyone on LimeWire, or just to people on their buddy lists. Similarly, users will be able to search for files from their friends. And this will take advantage of a sharing system that tens of millions of people already use, something that Lime Wire hopes will encourage many on the service to adopt the social elements.
Searle said he hopes that the social feature will allow users to trust the sources of the content they share across the system in a way that's not really possible when sharing with strangers.
LimeWire has spent a long time at the top of our Most Popular list for good reason--it's easy to use and gets the results people want. Though there is a certain amount of controversy surrounding file sharing, there are plenty of legal files that you can get through LimeWire. Once downloaded, you can even preview audio files with LimeWire's included media player.
Check out this First Look with Jason Parker from Download.com to get the lowdown on this extremely popular app for Mac.
If you're looking for something like LimeWire's genetically enhanced clone, look no further than FrostWire.
Featuring an ice-blue interface and all the features of LimeWire Pro, FrostWire should warm you up with fewer download restrictions and a connection-monitoring tab. Editor Seth Rosenblatt will show you what's hot and what's not in this First Look video.
I received an e-mail this morning from Pearl, the source of whose frustration is the failure of a prompted update. She writes:
I have been using LimeWire Basic for about four years with no problem. This morning I was using it and a box came up telling me to download an update, which I did. Then it all disappeared from my screen, and also took with it my original LimeWire, too. So I tried to download it again only to be told it was a corrupt file. I did this a couple of times with no joy.
I have been to the LimeWire contact area, wrote them a letter in two separate places, but it refuses to send mail as it says error occurred. So I cannot ask what is wrong, so I am hopeful you will be able to assist me.
Sometimes, for whatever reason, updates become corrupted or interrupted, leaving you without a functioning program, and with useless files littered throughout your file system. Now what? Pearl had the right idea to reinstall the app, though her continuing error messages suggest that she'll need to clear out the bits and pieces before achieving a clean install.
Before continuing, let me say it did cross my mind that the update could be malware riding on the coattails of a popular product. As LimeWire did recently update, the download is in all likelihood completely legitimate. If a software installation from an update prompt goes wonky, it's a good idea to check the current version and change log on the product site. False prompts are well-known ways for malware to slink in. If there's any doubt, e-mail the company in question and fire up that antivirus application for a system scan.
Now back to the issue at hand. Does LimeWire still shows up in your program list, Pearl? If so, try uninstalling it completely with a free app like Revo Uninstaller. If you're wary of Revo's slightly more aggressive "Moderate" mode, the "Safe" setting will still pluck out the ancillary files that could be standing in the way of reinstalling the app. If it appears that LimeWire's been removed, program shards could still be a clog. I'd recommend running CCleaner, another free app that should dissolve some of those leftover pieces. Then try reinstalling LimeWire fresh.
If that still fails, cruise LimeWire's forum to see if others have also discovered, and solved, the problem. If you seem to be the sole witness, post it and check back often to see if a LimeWire moderator or other peer has responded. CNET also has forums where you can draw from users' collective experience. Good luck!
FrostWire hopes to breathe some new life into the much-maligned P2P file-sharing client LimeWire.
LimeWire has become the Web 2.0 equivalent of Kazaa and the late 1990s Napster. What you think is last night's episode of Heroes turns out to be a villainous chunk of malware, and litigation issues have forced its programmers to include a license filter, warning you if you're about to grab something without proper copyright information attached. Plus, the interface is ugly.
... Read more
(Credit:
LimeWire)
LimeWire is best known as the latest in a long chain of software that makes it easy to find and download music for free, replacing Napster, Grokster, eDonkey, Kazaa, and all the other applications and networks that shut down or cracked down on the sharing of copyrighted material.
Lime Wire LLP, the company that makes the LimeWire software application, has also been sued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), but has so far refused to cave, saying that it only manufactures the software and has no control over how users choose to employ it. Moreover, it filed a countersuit in September 2006 on antitrust grounds, calling the RIAA an illegal cartel that conspires to destroy any distribution channel that the recording industry doesn't control. ... Read more
LimeWire is an extremely popular, peer-to-peer file-sharing program based on the Gnutella network. The version 4.0 series ups the ante with a combination of feature tweaks, an updated interface, and better all-around performance.
In this First Look video, take a quick tour of the app and learn how to screen out illegally shared content.
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