Another peer-to-peer (P2P) giant fell today, as the company behind popular online file-sharing software eDonkey agreed to pay the record industry $30 million and go out of business to avoid facing the industry's legal wrath, which has felled other P2P giants like Grokster, BearShare, Kazaa, and i2Hub.

eDonkey's Sam Yagan.

Citing court documents filed today, the Associated Press today reported that New York-based MetaMachine Inc. and its top executives, Sam Yagan and Jed McCaleb, agreed to immediately cease distributing eDonkey, eDonkey 2000, Overnet, and other software versions.

The company also agreed to take measures to prevent file-sharing by people using previously downloaded versions of the eDonkey software.

Visitors to the eDonkey Web site were greeted with a similar message as that of other formerly illegal P2P services: "If you steal music or movies, you are breaking the law. Courts around the world--including the United States Supreme Court--have ruled that businesses and individuals can be prosecuted for illegal downloading. You are not anonymous when you illegally download copyrighted material. Respect the music, download legally. Goodbye everyone."

"With this new settlement, another domino falls, and we have further strengthened the footing of the legal marketplace," Mitch Bainwol, chairman and chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), said in a statement.

A federal judge in New York, where the settlement agreement was filed, must still give final approval to the terms of the deal.

In the wake of the landmark June 2005 US Supreme Court decision that found that P2P firms could be held liable for copyright infringement that occurred on their networks, the RIAA sent cease-and-desist letter to most of the major P2P services. Most of them have either gone legit or gone under since then.

But in their wake, others have popped up. Most users of eDonkey have since transitioned to the open-source version of the eDonkey software, dubbed eMule, giving them access to the network that won't be impacted by a shutdown of eDonkey's business operations.