Judge Orders LimeWire To Shut Down

Granting a request from the music industry, a federal judge has ordered Limewire to shut down "the searching, downloading, uploading, file trading and/or file distribution functionality, and/or all functionality" of it's  P2P file sharing software. In May, the same U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood, had granted a summary judgement against the company, but Limewire may have a few tricks up its sleeve…

Today LimeWire issued an interesting official statement on this legal development: 

“While this is not our ideal path, we hope to work with the music industry in moving forward.  We look forward to embracing necessary changes and collaborating with the entire music industry in the future.” – LimeWire Spokesperson.

An important point of clarification, LimeWire is not “shutting down”, in specific regarding our software, we are compelled to use our best efforts cease support and distribution of the file-sharing software, along with increased filtering.  And, that is what we are doing.

"The core question is whether LimeWire will simply stop distributing new software, or whether it will actually cripple or turn off existing versions of its client, which has been downloaded hundreds of millions of times," according Peter Kafka of MediaMemo.  "If it’s the former, then the move isn’t quite as compelling. And even if LimeWire really is pulling the plug on its software, it won’t affect other open source LimeWire clients that run on the same Gnutella network, like Frostwire."