by Phillip Joseph
LimeWire and Ares were both free P2P ( peer-to-peer) file sharing client programs that ran on almost any OS that supported Java software platforms back in the day and almost solely supported the idea of media file sharing. You made an inquiry or two and you got what you needed without paying a cent to the artist or the production house. These people, however bloated their pockets might be, most likely toiled over months or years to make an 80mb file which you and I downloaded at 20kbps and waited for probably an hour to get our hands on and immerse ourselves in its goodness.
I was a kid, barely 11 when I first started 'sharing files' on LimeWire, which an older friend recommended and I didn't even know what that meant back then. All excited, I used to snoop around to see what that baby could do and ended up downloading 'Seek & Destroy' by Metallica like a boss and it was a supernatural feeling. How was I supposed to know I was blatantly ripping off people I would later idolised during teenage? I was bloody twelve years old! Soon enough I downloaded so much without having a clue about what kind of plan I was running with my Internet Service Provider and my bill went over the roof and touched 10k in 2 months back in 2004. My parents were royally pissed off with the ISP blaming them for mistaking accounts and the kid me thought my parents were right. People came over and checked my PC out and told my mom about how much I'd been downloading. That was bound to be the end of the line for my winning streak at ripping artists off. Fortunately I have a dad who thought getting an unlimited connection would be the better option over beating the shit out of his son. An unlimited connection in the hands of a 12 year old and you think you can do wonders. For just about anyone who's been gone through that timeline, I think the feeling is mutual when I say it was amazing to have that much access to the media you loved. LimeWire was just that to any user from a little kid to a 70 year old falling off his rocking chair.
Later on around 2006, LimeWire started getting messed up with the amount of porn it harboured and search results were going haywire. I remember searching for songs like 'Unforgiven' and 'Fear Of The Dark' and seeing the most bizarre names on video files and not finding the songs I wanted. Honestly, I never knew why so many men wanted to spank teachers and other people's mommies. Soon after, I quit LW and moved on to another client program called ARES which was gaining popularity for the same features as LW. The difference was, ARES didn't harbour as much pornographic content as LW and had a much cleaner look. Using it was a lot simpler and you got what you wanted although it worked just the way LW did. I started absorbing a lot of music later on and I tried to justify what I was doing telling myself that what I wanted wasn't out in stores in India and the only way to listen to these artists was to download their music illegally. I was supporting them by listening and sharing with people I knew, yet to a larger extent, I wasn't directly giving back anything for what I was listening to. As time passed, I quit downloading and now I'm mostly listening to podcasts day in and day out. These give you a diverse sense of the genre you're listening to and brings in new music every week or at least every fortnight and most of all it's legal and you are in no way ripping people off.
ARES and LimeWire started hitting a rough patch soon enough around 2008 with them losing a lot of cases on copyright issues even though torrents were the same thing with minor differences. LimeWire shut down some time in 2010 following an injunction issued by a U.S Federal court. The trial investigating the damages necessary to compensate affected record labels began in 2011 and I doubt a sum has been released. ARES went off the radar once Torrents became popular and the last I've seen of people using it was back in 2011.
ARES and LimeWire were the big daddies of the P2P business who lashed out at each other to get to the top on earnings and downloads. Both of them had paid versions that supported higher speeds and better file tracking. Sadly, neither came out alive. Both these clients are now obsolete or near obsolete with icons being the only remnants of a pretty much vibrant past for its users. The world keeps changing and some people adapt while others prefer to stick on to their core and die, with or without dignity.
ARES and LimeWire started hitting a rough patch soon enough around 2008 with them losing a lot of cases on copyright issues even though torrents were the same thing with minor differences. LimeWire shut down some time in 2010 following an injunction issued by a U.S Federal court. The trial investigating the damages necessary to compensate affected record labels began in 2011 and I doubt a sum has been released. ARES went off the radar once Torrents became popular and the last I've seen of people using it was back in 2011.
ARES and LimeWire were the big daddies of the P2P business who lashed out at each other to get to the top on earnings and downloads. Both of them had paid versions that supported higher speeds and better file tracking. Sadly, neither came out alive. Both these clients are now obsolete or near obsolete with icons being the only remnants of a pretty much vibrant past for its users. The world keeps changing and some people adapt while others prefer to stick on to their core and die, with or without dignity.