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Following in the footsteps of music file-sharing sites such as Napster and iMesh, New York-based LTDNetwork Inc. has bowed to pressure and taken its Qtrax music service legit.

The service was chased out of business in 2002 by the threat of legal action from music industry lawyers, but a new partnership with EMI Music Group of the UK announced today will see the firm re-launch later this year as an authorized music downloading service.

The new Qtrax v2.0 will use the Gnutella peer-to-peer network to deliver content in one of two subscription tiers, the first being free and full of ads on a limited catalog but allow users to download and use songs for free a set number of times – after that, they’ll have to pay to unlock each track’s full features. The second "premium" teir will be fee-based and allow unlimited access to the complete music catalog. The service will also block or restrict files for which the rights haven’t been obtained.

No word yet on when (or if) the new-and-improved Qtrax will be available to Canadians (the service is expected to enter a test phase in the next few months and will initially pilot the service in the United States only) or on how it plans to compete with the millions of files available for, uh, free on the Internet.