by Tom Phillips.
"The peer-to-peer file sharing software has been ordered to close down its file-sharing abilities after losing a long legal battle. Where will we get our malware-laden fake copies of Britney Spears tracks now?"
Limewire and its founder, Mark Gorton, have been locked in a four-year court fight with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the music industry body that wanted the service shut down on the grounds that it encourages copyright violations.
In May, Limewire's maker Lime Group was found liable of copyright infringement, with a follow-up trial to determine damages expected to take place in January.
And now an injunction has been issued by U.S. District Court in New York ordering Lime Group to immediately disable LimeWire's searching, downloading, uploading, file trading and distribution features, thus rendering it pretty useless.
Lime Group spokeswoman Tiffany Guarnaccia said LimeWire's digital music store will still be available, saying: 'We are out of the file-sharing business, but you can make it known that other aspects of our business remain ongoing.'
Lime Group is also working on a desktop media player, mobile apps and a catalog of music from which people can legally stream and download songs - hoping to follow a similar path to Napster, the original file-sharing service that reinvented itself as a fully legal service.
Limewire was one of the most popular file-sharing services that gained many users after Napster was shut down in 2001. However, its popularity among the getting-stuff-for-free crowd declined with the advent of BitTorrent, and the increasing amount of fake tracks and malware-laden files available through it.
I just hope frostwire has as many users as limewire did so it'll be just as easy to find songs.
