LimeWire, the peer-to-peer filesharing site, has been shut down after a four-year legal battle with the US music industry.

US Judge, Kimba Wood, issued a permanent injunction against the site, which gets around 50 million monthly users.

The court ruled that LimeWire was intentionally causing a “massive scale of infringement” by allowing a systematic breach of copyright.

Judge Wood said that the record companies “have suffered – and will continue to suffer – irreparable harm from LimeWire’s inducement of widespread infringement of their works”.

The decision marks a huge breakthrough for the ‘Recording Industry Association of America’ who began court action against LimeWire, four years ago.

According to their figures, US recorded music sales fell to $7.7bn in 2009 from $14.5bn in 1999.