The Man 1 – Limewire 0. That’s the current result in a long running court case brought by the Recording Industry Association of America against the popular file sharing site after US District Court Judge Kimba Wood ordered it shut down. The site was slapped with an injunction six months after Wood found that Limewire “assisted users in committing [copyright] infringement… on a massive scale”.
The permanent injunction has seen the site be replaced with a home page containing a legal notice informing visitors of the injunction and the stern warning ‘downloading or sharing copyrighted content without authorisation is illegal.” The next step in the case will occur in January when the judge will decide what damages Limewire has to cough up. Speculation is raging that the amount could range from $150,000 to $1 billion, however Limewire is certain to appeal the finding.
Company CEO George Searle says “Naturally, we’re disappointed with this turn of events… It’s a sad occasion for our team, and for you – the hundreds of millions of people who have used LimeWire to discover new things.” Figures tendered during court proceedings suggest that Limewire had 50 million unique users per month, and that up to 93% of the content infringed copyright.
