After years of drudging through the legal system, P2P software company Grokster came to a settlement with the allegations against them for copyright infringement and other things. Shutting down is what it amounts to, with Grokster being discontinued, permanently. It seems they have avoided financial, and have stated on their site that they plan to reform their software and come out with a "legitimate" P2P service in the near future that will prevent the lawsuit from resurfacing. The new software is dubbed Grokster 3G and was announced on their site, along with a briefing on the legal decision.
"The United States Supreme Court unanimously confirmed that using this service to trade copyrighted material is illegal. Copying copyrighted motion picture and music files using unauthorized peer-to-peer services is illegal and is prosecuted by copyright owners.
There are legal services for downloading music and movies. This service is not one of them."
P2P is one of the most controversial forms of Internet usage to date, mostly because of its popularity. It's a wonder how many of those perusing the P2P'ers also actually use the very software they condemn.