eDonkey have given up their legal battle with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) after increasing pressure and costly legal fees.
Sam Yagan, the president of MetaMachine which owns eDonkey said in a statement" Because we cannot afford to fight a lawsuit – even one we think we would win – we have instead prepared to convert eDonkey"s user base to an online content retailer operating in a "closed" P2P environment."
Over the summer eDonkey were sent a letter by the RIAA demanding that they either implement technology acceptable to the RIAA or shut down. WinMX, LimeWire, BearShare, and others received similar letters.
The RIAA"s actions were based on this summer"s Supreme Court decision in MGM Studios v. Grokster, when the court ruled that file-sharing services were responsible for copyright violations if they intended customers to use software primarily to swap songs and movies illegally.