Limewire Settles With Music Industry For $105 Million

LimeWire has finally agreed to pay $105 million for promoting illegal filesharing after a protracted five-year legal battle with record execs.

The settlement was reached out of court with 13 record companies, only days after the start of a trial accusing the company of "massive scale infringement."

According to RIAA, music sales in the U.S. weighed in at $14.5 billion in 1999, plummeting to $7.7 billion in 2009, primarily because of the predominance of peer-to-peer filesharing networks.

 The music industry blames LimeWire for the loss of over $1 billion in sales, which prompted legislators to shut down the site in October 2010 after a court ruling.

LimeWire was originally founded in 2000 and became one of the last filesharing holdouts against music industry pressure.