It's over. Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have finally—finally!—given up the legal war that earned them $100 million, that shamed the founder of Facebook, and that spawned an Oscar-winning movie.

The would-be Facebook founders have officially promised not to take their lawsuit against Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to the Supreme Court. In a federal court filing today, the twins said that after "careful consideration" they decided not to appeal a string of legal defeats.

They didn't have much to consider; after hearing the twins' plea to reverse a rich legal settlement with Zuckerberg, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals told them their "litigation must come to an end." The Winklevii were also struck down in district court and a second time by the appeals court.

The Winklevoss-Facebook feud began, of course, in 2003, when the champion rowers asked fellow Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg to program a social network called ConnectU. He agreed, but eventually launched his own network, Facebook, instead. The resulting dispute nurtured an eight-year cottage industry—spanning the legal, entertainment, and journalism worlds — that is now finally at its end. With no further legal discovery to be done, the world will no doubt be denied some juicy details of what, exactly, was going through Mark Zuckerberg's head when he started his social network. But given the extraordinary volume of such details already heaped on the reading and viewing public, that will be more of a reprieve than a deprivation.

[Photo via Getty]