By: John Gillies
For those who grew up on the internet, the name LimeWire has a certain nostalgia to it. Internet users will undoubtedly remember the circular lime-slice logo, alongside other discarded software and websites like AOL and Napster. The bright yellow and green of the logo transports users back to time spent afterschool sharing (read: pirating, if you’re Lars Ulrich from Metallica) songs amongst users who were unwilling to purchase entire CDs when they only wanted a single song. LimeWire was a crash course on the Internet for so many, as well as a healthy source of computer viruses for the family computer. It is this nostalgia which the new owners of the LimeWire trademark are seeking to exploit, as the name and logo have been repurposed as a market for buying and selling non-fungible tokens (“NFTs”), which are a form of digital artwork.
LimeWire was perfectly positioned to fill the void left when Napster (“the internet’s premier file-sharing service”) was shut down after only two years online. Napster’s departure from the peer-to-peer file-sharing space was quickly replaced by LimeWire, which rapidly grew into a massively popular platform. LimeWire was launched in 2000, when successful hedge-fund manager Mark Gorton saw an opportunity to build a commerce platform in peer-to-peer networking. What set LimeWire apart was its ability to escape legal ramifications for copyright violations for as long as it did. In fact, LimeWire was able to operate continuously from 2000 until October of 2010, when a U.S. District Court handed down an injunction.
Now, LimeWire has returned, but very little remains of the original product other than the name. In 2021, Austrian brothers Julian and Paul Zehetmayr purchased the rights to the brand. As far as the team operating the site goes, there are no members of the original LimeWire regime, which came to an end shortly after they were forced to pay $105 million in damages in 2011. This new version of LimeWire can generally be described as an NFT marketplace, but will lean into LimeWire’s music industry history, allowing users to “traffic in music-based NFTs like ‘exclusive songs, merchandise, graphical artworks and experiences like backstage content.’”
The platform, which has yet to launch, is being designed with a focus on simplifying the process of acquiring NFTs for users. Presently, the NFT market is fully intertwined with the cryptocurrency market, which requires the user to have a certain threshold of knowledge to participate. LimeWire’s NFT market will address and eliminate this learning curve, choosing instead to list prices in U.S. dollars (rather than crypto), and allow purchase through standard credit cards, rather than cryptocurrency wallets. The new platform is specifically designed to cater to “NFT newbies,” who are likely to remember using LimeWire, but may be unclear on how the relatively new NFT and cryptocurrency markets work.
The starkest difference between the old LimeWire and this new iteration (aside from trafficking substantially different goods – for money this time), is the intention that the artist comes first. CEO Julian Zehetmayr is on record saying that “LimeWire is returning as a platform for artists, not against them. . . . On LimeWire, the majority of the revenue will go directly to the artist, and we will be working with creators to allow full flexibility, ownership and control when it comes to their content.” The probability that artists will avoid the raw deal they received with LimeWire’s previous iteration is also improved by the fact that members of H.E.R. and the Wu-Tang Clan’s management teams are listed as partners and advisors.
This new direction for LimeWire is certainly different from the previous one. The new owners have been saying all the right things, but it remains to be seen if this platform will be the artist friendly marketplace the new owners are intending it to be. What is not in question is the powerful nostalgic effect this will have in attracting potential users like myself. While I am entirely unlikely to purchase any NFT, I do long for the rush of opening that green and yellow icon and seeing the complete symbol next to a file I’ve been impatiently waiting for. I’ll be there to check it out (along with the over 500,000 people who have signed up for the website’s waitlist) when it launches in May.
Student Bio: John Gillies is a second-year law student at Suffolk University Law School. He is a staffer on the Journal of High Technology Law. John received a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Sociology from the University of Connecticut.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog are the views of the author alone and do not represent the views of JHTL or Suffolk University Law School.
