Another One Bites the Dust

Madster/Aimster shut down:

An Illinois federal judge said Wednesday that he would order the Madster file-trading system, formerly known as Aimster, to halt song-swapping in the next few days.
The decision marks the Recording Industry Association of America’s (RIAA) second substantial court victory against a file-trading company, just a day after the RIAA’s legal victory in bankruptcy court shut Napster’s doors for what appears to be the last time.

In a detailed and often pointed opinion, Judge Marvin Aspen said that Aimster, which played a brief but colorful role on the file-trading stage not long after Napster’s appearance, was clearly responsible for large-scale copyright infringement.

“Defendants manage to do everything but actually steal the music off the store shelf and hand it to Aimster’s users,” Aspen wrote.

As with Napster’s final loss Tuesday, the immediate result of the Madster-Aimster case will have little impact on the file-swapping world. The owner of the service, an entrepreneur named John Deep, and the several companies associated with him that were connected with Aimster, all declared bankruptcy in March. The vast majority of file-traders have migrated to other platforms such as Kazaa, StreamCast Networks’ Morpheus, or iMesh…..