News of LimeWire's planned service comes even as the company is coming under tremendous pressure from the music industry over copyright infringement issues.

Just last week, eight music publishers sued the company for enabling what they claimed was massive copyright infringement. The lawsuit was filed as a related case to another, over the same issues.

Both parties have claimed that LimeWire's P2P file-sharing software has contributed to massive music piracy over the last few years. Both the RIAA and the publishers have argued that LimeWire has done little to stop problem, and has in fact, actually encouraged illegal downloads with the features in its software.

A federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, where the lawsuits have been filed, found LimeWire liable last month for enabling massive music piracy. That ruling in turn has prompted the RIAA to file separate motions asking for the company to be shuttered and for all of its assets to be frozen.

Jaikumar Vijayan covers data security and privacy issues, financial services security and e-voting for Computerworld. Follow Jaikumar on Twitter at or subscribe to . His e-mail address is .