Just before LimeWire was issued a court order to shut down, the company claimed they had 50 million monthly users who downloaded over three billion songs per month. The first year of LimeWire’s existence resulted in over three million downloads, and over the years its popularity rose mainly because of its user-friendly nature and lack of cost. LimeWire could be run on Windows, Mac, or Linux operating systems. In August 2000, LimeWire launched the software that we know today, a free P2P (Peer to Peer) sharing program that used the Gnutella network (a large P2P network) to allow users to download audio, video, images, and other files from others users who were also on the network. In June 2000, CEO and Founder Mark Gorton launched LimeWire LLC. 5 Death: Court Ruled Shutdown and Proliferation of BitTorrent and Storage Lockers.Thankfully for musicians everywhere, none of them have taken off in a major way, and several of them have been taken offline in short order. There have been several attempts to resuscitate the program or to create another that operates in almost the same way in the years since Limewire vanished, sometimes with a very similar name. While Limewire was forced out of existence almost immediately -but not before founder Mark Gorton agreed to pay the various record labels involved in legal action against him and his creation over $100 million in damages (which likely still didn’t make up for what had been stolen) -many who understand the technology that helped the service succeed in the first place have worked hard to bring it back, in one form or another. At its peak, there were several million people using the service to collect all the music they wanted, entirely for free, and while it’s impossible to nail down exactly how much all of that collective stealing could have been worth, there were several accounts that claimed it was somewhere between billions of dollars and trillions, though that latter suggestion is difficult to substantiate.
One of the biggest stories surrounding Limewire’s takedown was how much money the service may have cost the music industry. The major battle between the service and the music industry took place between 20, when a New York court ruled in the favor of the record labels (fronted by Arista Records this time around) and the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), forcing Limewire to finally shutter in 2010. The music industry was able to go after Napster and force it out of business in a relatively short period of time, but the same can’t be said for Limewire, which was allowed to operate almost entirely unabated for years.
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