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The home page of its site now reads 'There are legal services for downloading music and movies. This service is not one of them. Grokster hopes to have a safe and legal service available soon.'

The closure of Grokster follows a landmark decision by the Supreme Court in June that decided that the 'fair use' of technology defence established by Sony

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with its VCRs in the 1970s could not be used if the company actively encouraged illegal copying. The court found that Grokster was indeed promoting copyright infringement.

Since the Grokster ruling, a number of p2p file sharing services, have closed down. However, there has been a growth in legal downloads services from iTunes, Yahoo! and Napster.

'The Grokster verdict has spurred growth and innovation for legal music services, including a legitimate peer-to-peer market,' said David Israelite, Chairman and CEO of the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA). 'Now that a legal online entertainment environment has been established, the ultimate winners in the Grokster case are the music fans, who now have more options than ever before.'

This is not the end of p2p of course. For one thing, people who have the Grokster software will still be able to use it. Grokster's co-defendant StreamCast in the case against the RIAA has vowed to fight on.