LimeWire, one of the few major peer-to-peer (P2P) services to have escaped the music industry's legal wrath to date, was hit with a copyright infringement lawsuit late Friday.

LimeWire CEO Mark Gorton

Given the US Supreme Court's landmark decision regarding P2P services in June 2005, which determined that P2P services could be held liable for copyright infringement, LimeWire likely faces a daunting array of options: Go under, go legit, pay up, or all of the above.

The lawsuit was filed in US District Court in Manhattan by record labels owned by the world's four major record companies--Universal Music, Sony BMG, EMI Group, and Warner Music. It also names LimeWire parent Lime Group LLC as well as chief executive Mark Gorton and chief operating officer Greg Bildson as defendants.

The complaint said the labels were seeking at least $476 million in damages, or $150,000 for each of the more than 3,100 songs allegedly traded illegally on LimeWire, which launched in August 2000.

LimeWire is "devoted essentially to the Internet piracy of plaintiffs' sound recordings," the record companies charge in the suit. "The scope of infringement caused by defendants is staggering."

"Despite numerous efforts to engage LimeWire, the site's corporate owners have shown insufficient interest in developing a legal business model," the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) said in a statement. "While other services have come productively to the table, LimeWire has sat back and continued to reap profits on the backs of the music community. That is unfortunate and has left us no choice but to file a lawsuit to protect the rights and livelihoods of artists, songwriters and record label employees."

That legal business model--filtering illegal files from its network and replacing them with copy-protected, industry-supplied files that users would pay for--has been the choice of many of LimeWire's predecessors in facing the RIAA's wrath.

All of those companies received cease-and-desist letters from RIAA in the wake of the Supreme Court decision last year, as did LimeWire.

To date, iMesh, Kazaa, Mashboxx, Qtrax, and Grokster, one of the two named defendants in the case eventually decided by the Supreme Court, have all paid a settlement and gone the legal route. WinMX has folded, while Bearshare settled for $30 million and folded its assets into iMesh. Streamcast's Morpheus, the other named defendant in the Grokster case, has vowed to keep fighting its case in court. eDonkey remains one of the few major P2P services that has not yet been sued or gone under.

Despite the Supreme Court decision and the moves by most P2P firms to settle up with the RIAA, "Defendants have continued to promote, market, and distribute LimeWire as the successor-in-infringement to these pirate services," the complaint states.

A LimeWire spokeswoman could not be reached for comment.