It’s a sad day for music lovers. A huge force in the industry has fallen.
Like so many more before it, and after years of investigation, file sharing and peer-to-peer network LimeWire has been ordered to be shut down after a ruling Tuesday by a federal judge.
U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood of New York issued the permanent injunction, stating LimeWire must disable the “searching, downloading, uploading, file trading, and/or file distribution functionality” of its website.
The site must also inform its workers, investors and customers of the injunction — as well as file a progress report to Wood within 14 days to make sure all conditions are being met.
When visiting LimeWire’s homepage, I was met with the following 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.”
The Recording Industry Association of America said in a statement the injunction “will start to unwind the massive piracy machine that LimeWire and [founder and Chairman Mark] Gorton used to enrich themselves immensely,” according to The New York Times.
This move follows the pattern of other popular peer-to-peer sites such as Napster, Grokster and Kazaa being sued and eventually shut down because of file sharing.
The RIAA can make statements all it wants about how it will start to end piracy with this new injunction, but its statement is about as similar as people claiming they are going to end world hunger by sending one french fry to each starving person in the world.
Sure it helps for now, but soon everyone will be starving again.
LimeWire formed in 2000, one year before Napster — easily the most recognized file sharing site — received its injunction to shut down in 2001.
When one falls, another will rise.
Even though LimeWire received its injunction Tuesday, that doesn’t mean the case is necessarily over.
LimeWire chief executive George Searle said the injunction only applied to LimeWire’s file-sharing product. “Our company remains open for business,” Searle explains.
He also says the company is deeply committed to working with the music industry.
LimeWire and the RIAA will appear before Judge Wood in January to begin arguments on damages LimeWire will pay.
When Kazaa was shut down, a settlement was reached at $100 million.
That would buy a lot of CDs.
While it’s obvious to understand why the RIAA is coming down so hard on these sites — users are effectively stealing music — it seems as if their struggle is futile.
Similarly, back in the early to mid 2000s, when teenagers and housewives were being sued for ludicrous amounts of money for the handful of songs they downloaded illegally to help prove some point, it quickly ended because it became too expensive and time-consuming to handle all of those lawsuits.
If the RIAA plans to bring down every single file-sharing website, it has a lot of work to do.
Knowing how expensive lawsuits are, I’d be surprised if the RIAA didn’t start losing more money than it made on its quest to bring down online piracy.
I personally quit using LimeWire about a year ago and moved onto BitTorrent and Pirate Bay (another site dealing with legal issues).
No matter how many of these sites are shut down, others will form to take their place. It’s just a never-ending cycle the music industry will have to learn to understand.
Besides, what was it we learned in elementary school growing up?
Sharing is caring — it can be fun!
 
Adam Arinder is a 21-year-old communication studies senior from Baton Rouge. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_Aarinder.
 
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Contact Adam Arinder at [email protected]