eDonkey is the latest P2P network to cease its operations after drawn out negotiations with the major record companies. MetaMachine, who owned the service, will pay the record companies $30 million in compensation for the copyright violation their software enabled.
As previously reported, eDonkey was one of the popular file sharing companies targeted after the content owners won the landmark MGM v Grokster case last year. Bosses at the P2P company indicated as long a go as last September that they would most likely cease trading in light of that Supreme Court ruling, although it's taken a year of negotiations to actually do so. It's not clear if eDonkey, like some of the other P2Ps who have ceased operating because of legal pressure from the content owners, will now attempt to launch a legitimate P2P service where a subscription fee is charged to compensate copyright owners.
Of course whether or not such legit P2P services will even be commercially viable while new illegal and free to use networks continue to surface is as yet unproven. At the time of the Grokster ruling eDonkey's boss Sam Yagan said: "I fear that the winners in Grokster will not be the labels and the studios, but rather the offshore, underground, rogue P2P developers who will have just lost half a dozen of their biggest competitors".
As part of the agreement with the record labels, eDonkey have posted a message on their website where, until this week, you could previously download their P2P software, which reads: "The eDonkey2000 Network is no longer available. If you steal music or movies, you are breaking the law. You are not anonymous when you illegally download copyrighted material". The company is also making unspecified moves to limit the use of eDonkey software already installed on users' machines.
Commenting on the eDonkey settlement, the boss of the Recording Industry Association Of America, Mitch Bainwol, said yesterday: "With this new settlement, another domino falls, and we have further strengthened the footing of the legal marketplace".
Of course, as is so often the way, by the time a P2P network is forced out of business by the litigious record companies many of the kids who acquire music this way have moved on to a newer rival anyway. All eyes will now surely be on LimeWire, still, I think, the P2P network of the moment (certainly it's the one everyone I know uses, not that I know anyone who uses P2P networks of course, I used to, but I had them all shot). After the Grokster ruling, there were rumours LimeWire would go legit and bar illegal file sharing, but that never happened and the RIAA formally sued them last month. It will be interesting to see how long they will hold out before throwing in the towel, and also which of the newer P2P systems will rise to take its place as the file sharers' preferred P2P of the moment.