I'm surprised it took this long, but LimeWire is officially shut down for good. A suit was filed by the RIAA on behalf of major music publishers for copyright infringement -- aka distributing music and other media files for free. If you've never heard of LimeWire, it was a program that enabled anybody to upload music and videos from their computer to be downloaded by anyone who searched for the content free. This resulted in a massive flood of people ditching the pricey iTunes model for free music whenever they want. Was it illegal? Hell yes. Did people care? Not even slightly. LimeWire had a good run.

LimeWire now has a banner posted to its website that reads:

THIS IS AN OFFICIAL NOTICE THAT LIMEWIRE IS UNDER A COURT-ORDERED INJUNCTION TO STOP DISTRIBUTING AND SUPPORTING ITS FILE-SHARING SOFTWARE. DOWNLOADING OR SHARING COPYRIGHTED CONTENT WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION IS ILLEGAL.

 No new downloads of the software are allowed. But there is hope, for now. If you used LimeWire and are now looking for an alternative, try FrostWire.