LimeWire, arguably one of the world’s most well-known peer-to-peer file-sharing services, has been ordered to permanently shut down operations after a U.S. Federal judge found it liable for copyright infringement on a massive scale.
The injunction, issued late Tuesday night, forces the Lime Group to disable all searching, upload and downloading features within the application which was also available for Linux.
The ruling is the result of a four-year legal wrangle between the Lime Group and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) who, speaking after the injunction was issued, were pleased with the outcome: 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.
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 will take place in January 2011 according to the RIAA statement.
US judge Kimba Wood, who issued the Injunction, had previously stated that potential damages resulting from the misuse of LimeWire were staggering.