Lawsuits that attempted to shut the massive site down date back to 2003,
which has many asking why it took so long. One large group that
included Sony BMG, Virgin Records and Warner Brothers Records, come
together to file a joint suit in the summer of 2006 against the P2P
firm. It asked for compensatory and punitive damages to the tune of
$150,000 for each song that was distributed illegally. The lawyers for
the recording companies said, at the time, that LimeWire was ''devoted
essentially to the internet piracy of plaintiffs' sound recordings''.
He went on to call the damage ''staggering''.
Napster, another
download site that at one time felt the wrath of uncompensated musical
artists, had completely redesigned its business model and went on to
become a favorite for those looking for the biggest hits from their
favorite artists or the classics from the 1940s. The company now
charges anywhere from 99 cents to more than $1.40 per download.
LimeWire somehow managed to bypass a court order to change its
practices.
Now, and after four years, the company was ordered
shut down until and unless it undergoes a massive redesign and stops the
free file sharing that includes the work of other artists.
A
message on the now empty site reads, in part, ''This is an official
notice that LimeWire is under a court ordered injunction to stop
distributing and supporting its file-sharing software''. No definitive
word yet, but one employee told the media it would begin to consider
other ways to launch services that will no longer be free but that will
address the court order while maintaining compliance with the national
copyright laws.
Over the years, LimeWire downloaders have run
into a host of problems, including downloading what they believed was
their favorite song, only to realize it was a virus that caused untold
headaches and damages to the users networks. Some say it was karma,
others say it was illegal. That point is moot, of course, since the
concept in its totality was ruled illegal.
In recent years, other
P2P sites, including Kazaa, were ordered to pay monetary damages to the
music industry. In 2006, Kazaa was hit with more than $115 million in
fines. Most of these companies went out of business; somehow, though,
LimeWire managed to stay under the radar. The Recording Industry
Association of America has made comments such as ''While other services
have come productively to the table, LimeWire has sat back and continued
to reap profits on the backs of the music community''.
This most recent judgment, however, just might be the fatal blow to its current model.
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