Long a treasure trove for free illegal music, file-sharing website LimeWire was ordered to shut its doors Tuesday after receiving an injunction from the U.S. district court of New York.
The ruling specifically mandated Lime Group, the operators of LimeWire, to disable its searching, downloading, uploading and file sharing mechanisms. The move ends a longstanding war between the site and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which has rallied against the site, which it accuses of promoting piracy of copyrighted content.
LimeWire claims to be in the midst of developing new software that won’t break copyright law, but a cloud has hung over the firm for months.
Peer-to-peer services like LimeWire, alongside once-popular programs like Kazaa, have always had difficulty satisfying industry groups like the RIAA and MPAA about their legitimacy. In May, LimeWire was found liable for ‘substantial’ copyright infringement in a case from 2006 brought by the Recording Industry Association of America. In June, LimeWire was hit with a separate lawsuit by eight music publishers for copyright infringement.
The Federal Trade Commission reported earlier this year that P2P sites like LimeWire, BearShare, Kazaa and others are consistently leaking sensitive customer and employee data to the sites. The BBC has more on this story.
