The music industry settled its litigation against MetaMachine, developers of the eDonkey file-sharing network software, today. The settlement came three days after a federal district judge ruled that MetaMachine was culpable for copyright infringement under precedent established by the US Supreme Court in last year's Grokster decision. The judge must still approve the settlement, under which MetaMachine must pay US $30 Million.
eDonkey was most recently the file-sharing network with the highest traffic worldwide. MetaMachine was one of the seven recipients of cease-and-desist letters from the RIAA after Grokster was handed down. Most of the other recipients either have shut down (e.g., WinMX) or are converting to copyright-respecting services (e.g., BearShare). LimeWire and a couple of others have chosen to defy the RIAA.
MetaMachine is now forbidden from distributing its software anymore, although (as with other decentralized P2P networks) users who already have the software can still use the network. MetaMachine is obligated to help stop these people from using the software, but it is unclear what the company is expected to do or even how it can be done. It is also unknown whether the company will follow the paths of iMesh and BearShare and try to convert eDonkey's massive user base to a copyright-respecting service; the robustness and scalability of the technologies those services are using remain unproven.
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