LimeWire Shut Down

LimeWire has joined the likes of Napster, Grokster, Kazaa and other peer-to-peer file-sharing services that have been silenced, or forced to become legitimate by the record industry. The popular peer-to-peer file-sharing client has been shut down by the New York District Court, a message on the site reads, “This is an official notice that LimeWire is under a court-ordered injunction to stop distributing and supporting its file-sharing software. Downloading or sharing copyrighted content without authorization is illegal.”

Judge Kimba Wood in Manhattan accepted the request for the injunction because the service had been found liable for copyright infringement. According to a Reuters report, "Saying that LimeWire's parent Lime Wire LLC intentionally caused a "massive scale of infringement" involving thousands of works, Wood issued a permanent injunction that requires the company to disable its "searching, downloading, uploading, file trading and/or file distribution functionality.”

Record companies "have suffered -- and will continue to suffer -- irreparable harm from LimeWire's inducement of widespread infringement of their works," Judge Wood wrote. She called the potential damages "staggering," and probably "well beyond" the New York-based company's ability to pay.

The Reuters report notes that "The signed ruling was made available by The Recording Industry Association of America, which represents music companies. It has said that Lime Wire has cost its members hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue."

The case will resume in January, when the Recording Industry Association of America will attempt to gain compensation for the countless illegal music downloads. The minimum damages for music copyright infringement are $150,000 per infringement, and the RIAA may end up walking away with over $1 billion.

The complete court document can be viewed at: http://download.limewire.com/injunction/Injunction.pdf.