More than a million Australians who have used the LimeWire services to illegally download music and movies will in 2011 have to find a new bit torrent service or go legal.
On Friday executives of the US Company said that they are cancelling plans for a legitimate music store and will shut the business down for goo0d after losing several court cases bought against them by the RIAA.
In a statement issued at the weekend Company executives said “Given our current situation, plans to bring our separate, legal music service to market have been cancelled. The beginning of 2011 will mark the closing of LimeWire’s New York office and cessation of business by LimeWire. We attracted some of the top talent from the technology community over the years to build our new music service. We’ll be helping our team members commence their job search over the next few months.”
The closure followed a lawsuit loss to RIAA labels. LimeWire tried to persuade the court that the app wasn’t intended for piracy and that it had made reasonable efforts to watch content, but the judge in the case was unconvinced and noted that the majority of the content was pirated.
During recent court cases it was revealed that over 1 million Australians used the LimeWire service.
