LimeWire shut down by federal court
LimeWire, one of the world's most popular peer-to-peer file sharing websites, has been shut down after a four-year legal battle with the US music industry.
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.
Founded in 2000 by Mark Gorton, a former Wall Street trader, LimeWire is now restricted from allowing the searching and sharing of copyrighted material. The website will continue "working with the music industry to move forward", a LimeWire spokeswoman confirmed.
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.
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 has 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 file sharing networks is singled out as a primary factor for this decline by the RIAA.
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.
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.
"In January, the court will conduct a trial to determine the appropriate level of damages necessary to compensate the record companies for the billions and billions of illegal downloads that occurred through the LimeWire system."
Earlier this year, LimeWire planned to release a service called Spoon, which would allow users to legally purchase copyrighted tracks. The deal fell through, however, when record labels were told that the site would need at least a year to migrate illicit file sharers to the new service.
More here: <a href='http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/oct/27/limewire-shut-down'>limewire
korg
korg
ghost 14 years ago
Those poor folks only made 7.7 billion from doing nothing. How un-American god dammit! What kind of world are we coming to when millions of ordinary people can get away with sandbagging parasitic billionaires?
TommyCat 14 years ago
I hope they leave DC alone.. or what?? is somebody trying to shut down P2P networks? After we invented them (oh, P2p networks, Let's bring people together, that's so good, a good thing) now we crush them (Let's destroy those P2P networks, let's destroy something that is the product of someone's hard work, Let's make everyone pay for a goddamn mp3 or video, even those that can't afford to buy them.)
For example, I live in Romania. Here the minimum salary per month is, at the moment (November 2010), less than $200 gross, with a net income of about $130 per month (after taxes)
So.. YOU try to live with $130 per month (buy food, pay electricity, water, methane gas, buy gasoline or diesel if you own a car, pay the taxes for the car(if you have one) which are at least about $350-$400 per year.. and SO ON.
Does anybody here think that with that kind of money you can also afford to buy music and videos? Of course I buy music albums, but only those that really matter for me (for example Elvis, or Modern Talking, or other albums that I like to have).. but that's IT, I can't really afford to buy every single mp3 that i listen for a month maybe and then I forget about it.
I know that artists earn money from those sales, and I agree that people have to support them.. why not let them make money from the commercial use of their creations (on TV, Radio, etc), and let the average Joe listen to the music for free.
It's just an opinion.. Thank you
TommyCat 14 years ago
Sorry for not properly formatting the text, but I wrote this very fast.
Thank You
stealth- 14 years ago
Actually it's back up now… Sort've. Some hackers put up a "Limewire Pirate Edition" that comes with all the Pro features automatically unlocked and the ads removed. The irony in this is that the new pirate edition is distributed via bittorrent.
Xepha 13 years ago
Internet censorship is on the way unfortunately, Obama already has a "shut down" button apparently. I suppose it was only a matter of time due to sheer popularity. What next? RS?
:radio: ;)
ghost 13 years ago
I don't understand how they can say they lost money. I wasn't going to buy their cd anyway. Whether I download their product illegaly or not I still was not going to buy a cd so they didn't even lose potential income.
As for the shutdown button, what a waste. Do they ever consider that the internet is a big part of keeping people placated? Seriously, if I couldn't surf I might actually get motivated to do something about the shit that pisses me off rather than just read about it.