Court Closure As Limewire Runs Out Of Juice

File-sharing service Limewire has closed after a New York court granted a request from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), representing the music industry.

Widely accepted as the world’s most-downloaded peer-to-peer (P2P) client, Limewire is accused of “infringing the copyright of [the RIAA] members by facilitating the illegal trading of music, movies and other content” and of robbing the recording companies and their artists of billions of pounds in profits and royalty fees.

Substantial Infringements

According to the injunction, Limewire “intentionally encouraged infringement” by its users and knew about the “substantial infringement being committed”.

The court action started in 2007 and the RIAA has had temporary injunctions served on Limewire in the past. These were duly obeyed but the site reappeared. This time it is a permanent injunction and will end the site’s activities.

The New York District Court demanded that Limewire shut down its entire operation, including all searches and uploading and downloading that occurs through the P2P client.

The site may have closed but Lime Wire, the holding company, will survive, said Mark Gorton, the former Wall Street trader who founded the company in 2000. As happened after the RIAA’s last notable success, the closure of Napster, LimeWire will rise again, Gorton said, by working with the music industry to “move forward”.

Already there is a US-sales-only beta site called LimeWire Store which offers MP3 downloads at $0.99 each. For the future it promises it will be: “a low cost digital music store that lets you buy MP3s in bulk and save. Over 4 million songs for $0.27 each with a membership plan. Thousands of free songs.”

The site appears to be untouched by the court order, but does mention that there is an injunction in place. In a statement, the RIAA stated that its next move to decide damages will begin in January.

“For the better part of the last decade, LimeWire and Gorton have violated the law,” said the 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.

“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.”

In past cases, the RIAA has asked for massive fines to be levied but the amount awarded has always been less than the organisation’s legal fees. Ray Beckerman, an RIAA-watcher, claimed that between 2006 and 2009 it cost the RIAA $64 million to recover $1.3 million.

The RIAA will now move on to seek other targets.