The P2P music trading company that caught the attention of the music industry, LimeWire, led everyone on a merry chase after they attempted to hold onto the last vestiges of their service in the face of an onslaught. First, the RIAA and MPAA took it upon themselves to do everything they could to sue them into oblivion; then the FTC took a look at their practices, following complaints of possible privacy infractions and security implications. But really what ended up taking LimeWire down has been the music and movie industry and legal concepts of enabling copyright infringement and piracy.

[box type=”info”]Happy Holidays! The SiliconANGLE news and editorial team came to a group decision: we wanted a few days off for the holidays. Since very little in the way of tech news is going to be happening over the next few days (and you’ll still be looking for content to voraciously consume), we’d round out the biggest stories of the year in an ongoing series called “What You Missed Living Under Your Rock During 2010.” For the rest of the series, go here. Want more detail about the stories discussed here?  Don’t forget click through on all the links.

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Editor-in-Chief Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins[/box]

In August when the FTC dropped their probe into the privacy complaints we thought that LimeWire could breathe a sign of relief. While the FTC did begin its investigation based on the previous security of the software, it still seemed extremely odd because this is an extremely rare thing and security/privacy concerns are rife throughout almost all software (even the Windows OS.) They eventually voluntarily dropped the investigation on the grounds of caveat emptor and that users simply needed to be educated in what older versions were unsafe.

Next, at the end of October LimeWire finally got caught flat footed over copyright infringement cases and shut down. “Whether some might be concerned about the fact that LimeWire’s decreased popularity is not insecure, statistics show that there are 50 million visitors each month that counterfeit the copyright policy via peer-to-peer file sharing.” As it was, the service still remained extremely popular even after the FTC probe and the shut-down after showing the service was in fact liable for the piracy committed by its users.

Very shortly thereafter users of the popular service railed against the RIAA and the music industry in general for their part in shutting down LimeWire and started to seek alternatives and LimeWire began laying off workers in a great attrition. “The recent news on Limewire shutdown alarmed the downloading public. As early as now, they are searching for alternatives as the big question of ‘How will I download songs now?’ glares. But, there is good news beyond the dissolution of the ever-popular downloading site: the Gnutella network where they get the actual songs did not shut down.” While this could have been seen as a victory for the music industry it would be known as Pyrrhic at best—the LimeWire only stood as a conduit for a larger file sharing network that has proven to this day to be largely unassailable because it’s not centralized.

Of course, a brief spark of hope still glimmered about the resurrection of LimeWire upon its own, now loosed Gnutella network, but that wouldn’t last.

In only a few days, LimeWire will be gone entirely from the annals of peer-2-peer file trading services as they shutter their online store upon the last day of 2010.

With that final gesture, LimeWire will probably dissolve as a company, leaving behind only a legacy of the FTC probe, the RIAA’s battle against them and their enabling one of the largest and most massive peer-2-peer file trading networks. They also showed exactly how powerful Gnutella networks can become.