LimeWire, Finally Shut Down...

After a four year long legal battle with a federal judge in New York, LimeWire, a file trading database, is forced to disable it's software. The company has most commonly been used for illegally sharing music, with billions of dollars in losses for the music industry. Sharing music illegally is common knowledge amongst teenagers and young adults. It is hard to find someone who has not used an illegal service for free music. Here is an excerpt from the New York Times article that reported on what happened on Tuesday:

 Although LimeWire, the file-sharing service that allows users to swap music that is a major descendant of Napster, is on the verge of vanishing in its current form, the company will continue negotiations with the major music companies about a licensing deal to offer music legally for sale with a subscription service.

LimeWire will no longer allow illegal downloading and follow the path of fellow companies such as Napster. Clearly, this path of legality is the righteous one. The losses the music industry has had are astronomical in size. However, the weight put on the company for the money lost seems exorbitant because it is mostly the fault of internet users who took absolute advantage of the database. If LimeWire did not exist, there would, and are, hundreds of other ways to get illegal music on the internet. I am not sure how this legal hit will affect the company in the long run, but in the short run they are surely going to go through some rough times.