U.S. court shuts down LimeWire music-sharing service
Quote:
NEW YORK -- A U.S. federal judge on Tuesday granted the music industry's request to shut down the popular LimeWire file-sharing service, which had been found liable for copyright infringement, the company said.
The ruling requires LimeWire to "disable the searching, downloading, uploading, file trading and/or file distribution functionality, and/or all functionality of the software," according to LimeWire.
The decision halts one of the world's biggest services for allowing consumers to share music, movies and TV shows for free over the Internet.
Founded in 2000 by Mark Gorton, LimeWire has been a thorn in the side of record companies because millions of fans used the service as an easy way to find and download music for free.
The Recording Industry Association of America, a trade group representing music labels, brought the case against LimeWire, estimating that the service cost its members hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue.
"For the better part of the last decade, LimeWire and Gorton have violated the law," the RIAA said in a statement. "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."
The RIAA said that in January the court will conduct a trial to determine damages necessary to compensate the record companies for what it said were "billions and billions of illegal downloads" over the LimeWire system.
LimeWire has said it has more than 50 million monthly users. These users accounted for 58 percent of people who said they downloaded music from a peer-to-peer service in 2009, a survey by NPD Group showed.
I didn't know ANYONE used it anymore..
The last time I downloaded it was like, 2007.. when I didn't know about mediafire and other sites.
Oh how times have changed.
OK!!! We have other sites better than this virus infecting site............
This.
and at Virus-infecting! I got so many viruses off this back in 2007! It's 2010 bitches, I use mediafire now. These 50 million users need to get with the times
Everyone I know uses Limewire. Oh well, hopefully their computers got the last of the viruses. 
at Virus-infecting! I got so many viruses off this back in 2007! It's 2010 bitches, I use mediafire now. These 50 million users need to get with the times 