LimeWire Ordered To Shut Down

A federal judge has issued an injunction against LimeWire that essentially puts the music file-sharing site out of business, five months after it lost a copyright-infringement suit filed by the record industry.

U.S. district judge Kimba Wood in New York issued the permanent injunction Tuesday, ordering LimeWire to disable the "searching, downloading, uploading, file trading, and/or file distribution functionality" of the software it distributed to users to access and share files through the peer-to-peer service.

In addition, the judge said in the 17-page ruling that LimeWire must notify its workers, investors, and customers of the injunction. Wood also ordered the site to file a progress report in meeting all conditions of the order within 14 days.

The injunction essentially shut down the site, which on Tuesday posted on its homepage a legal notice saying that it had been ordered to stop distributing and supporting its file-sharing application. "Downloading or sharing copyrighted content without authorization is illegal," the post warned.

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