German eDonkey servers shut down

FILE-SHARING service eDonkey suffered a body blow last Friday as German music industry lawyers won a fight in the battle to to shut down the 'Donkey servers.

The District Court in Hamburg has made a temporary injunction to the operator of an eDonkey server. Heise reports that the computer must be taken offline for "as long as the range of music files offered for download via the server contains illegal files."

While the server itself did not host any illegal files - being a P2P service after all - the server operator was snagged for having "willingly and in a causal fashion assisted in the illegal disturbance."

"We shall in future take legal action against any operator of a P2P network srver who makes tracks available ilegally," warned International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) director Peter Zombik. He went on to say that it's "sad to see the inherently beneficial P2P network technology still being used to violate copyright on a massive scale."

Stefan Michalk of the IFPI told Heise that, after the move, it's up to the ISPs to lend a helping hand. µ