Halloween Special: Court Shuts Down LimeWire

Article by George Norman (Cybersecurity Editor)

on 29 Oct 2010

In expectation of All Hallows Eve this weekend, I proclaimed today Halloween Special day here on FindMySoft. Consequently today all the news will be focused on Halloween-related stuff or just spooky bits and pieces. The following news falls in the second category – spooky, terrifying, awful!

Here’s the news, try not to let you a scream: LimeWire, the popular peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing client that offered support for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, has been shut down by the United States District Court Southern District of New York. LimeWire, the application that has been around for more than a decade, the application that became one of the most used P2P applications in the world, has been shut down.

If you go to LimeWire.com you will be greeted with the following message:
LEGAL NOTICE
This is an official notice that LimeWire is under a
court-ordered injunction to stop distributing and supporting its file-sharing software. Downloading or sharing copyrighted content without authorization is illegal.

Who is responsible for LimeWire’s demise? The trade group that claims to represent the US recording Industry, the Recording Industry Association of America (or RIAA for short). The RIAA took LimeWire to court and argued that LimeWire “intentionally encouraged infringement” by LimeWire users, that LimeWire is used “overwhelmingly for infringement”, that LimeWire knew about the “substantial infringement being committed” by its users, and that LimeWire’s business model depends on mass copyright infringements.

The RIAA won that trial; consequently the New York District Court ordered LimeWire to shut down its entire operation. The LimeWire client no longer works, the LimeWire website no longer works, searches don’t work, downloading and uploading no longer works.

If you’re looking for a LimeWire replacement, TorrentFreak has put together a nice list of alternatives – check it out here.

Other articles from today’s Halloween Special:


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