The Department of Justice just gutted the largest illegal music-sharing site in the United States
Joe Schlabotnik/Flickr (CC)
The US Department of Justice has seized control of ShareBeast, the popular-music file-sharing site.
ShareBeast.com was the largest illegal file-sharing site for music operating within the US, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.
Like the historical act of putting a rotting corpse on display to warn other would-be pirates, ShareBeast.com now displays the familiar banner of the FBI on its site:
RIAA Chairwoman and CEO Cary Sherman called this a huge win for the music industry.
"ShareBeast operated with flagrant disregard for the rights of artists and labels while undermining the legal marketplace," she said in a release.
In a recent high-profile incident, ShareBeast was hosting a leak of Kanye West's upcoming album "Swish," according to Ars Technica. But the offerings on the site were sprawling, from music to soccer to television shows.
"Millions of users accessed songs from ShareBeast each month without one penny of compensation going to countless artists, songwriters, labels and others who created the music," Sherman said.
A related site, AlbumJams.com, was also taken down.