eDonkey bites the dust - sort of

Another file-sharing service - by which people can download free but copyrighted music and other media - settled this week. "The firm behind popular online file-sharing software eDonkey has agreed to pay $30 million to avoid potential copyright infringement lawsuits from the recording industry," the Associated Press reports. The company, MetaMachine, Inc., agreed to stop distributing its eDonkey, eDonkey 2000, Overnet and other file-sharing software applications, as well as to prevent people from file-sharing with previously downloaded versions of them. MetaMachine was one of seven companies to receive warning letters from the RIAA. BearShare, i2Hub, WinMX, Grokster, and Kazaa have also settled. But the interesting thing about this story is how file-sharing is really out of these companies' hands, no matter how many lawsuits are piled on. "EDonkey has been the most popular file-sharing network the last two years, but most of the computer users tapping into the hub of linked PCs have increasingly done so using an open-source version of the eDonkey software dubbed eMule," the AP reports, citing the view from file-sharing traffic measurer BigChampagne. "Because many computer users still have functional versions of eDonkey or eMule, it's unlikely the shutdown of eDonkey's business operations will have much of an impact on people file-swapping on the eDonkey network."