LimeWire"s days of file-sharing are over after a court ruling today is forcing the company to stop distributing and supporting LimeWire"s P2P file-sharing service.
As per the court ruling, LimeWire "intentionally encouraged direct infringement" and that they were well aware they were endorsing piracy; they were marketing the program to Napster users who were known copyright infringers.
The immediate shutdown notice will prevent any users from using their software and when you try to use it, you will be promoted with a notice about the court order takedown.
Although LimeWire alerted users with a warning about illegally sharing and distributing copyrighted material, it wasn"t enough to prevent the courts from forcing the owners to shut the service down. LimeWire now joins a long line of other P2P filesharing applications like KaZaa and Napster that have both faced the same demise.
But KaZaa and Napster did find success after their court ordered shutdowns from major record labels to sell and promote music, but according to sources, LimeWire has been turned down by all of the major record labels and will face a complete shutdown.
A LimeWire spokesperson told Neowin in an email exchange:
"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."
"We are out of the file-sharing business, but that other aspects of our business remain ongoing."
Limewire.com is still up and running, but prompts users with the above legal notice, and a link to their court ordered shut down, which can be found here (PDF)
Thanks to Mephistopheles for the tip!