Is Limewire illegal?

Answer 1

no

Answer 2

People that answer "yes" don't understand what Limewire is. Limewire is not illegal, however downloading music that you did not purchase legally is. Limewire is just a software that allows peer to peer file sharing. Not all files are consider illegal, and not everyone that uses Limewire uses it illegally.

The copying of music that has been copyrighted, and the distribution of such music, is illegal per the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Answer 3

All the p2p programs are illegal. Whether you went and payed for that sevice or not. When you pay for the download 'that' money cannot in any way be split to go to the rightful owner's of the music you havn't even download yet. The one thing that you can do is be a free loader. That is, you can download from other's just don't let anyone UPload from you. Downloading is legal, uploading isn't. Uploading is when you have a file someone wants and they start downloading from you. So how you do that is hide the folder that from being downoaded.

Answer 4

They have both a free and a pay version. I heard that if you download anything from limewire , that you need to run it through your AV cause Limewire downloads are rampant with viruses.

Answer 5

downloading limewire is not illegal.however downloading the songs and videos are.its not good to use limewire because is p2p
which means that some not so nice pepople out there can decide to hid a virus in ur file.what tou should so is download a bittorrent client like "bitlord" and then you go on to a website like isohunt.com or mininova.org and download from there its much easier and safer

Answer 6

A Peer to Peer Site as Limewire is not illegal - but be careful, it sends to your computer viruses spy and and malware.

Answer 7

limewire is not illegal but the use that you use it for might be illegal see limewire can say it is not illegal because it is a serch type engine witch mean that you are makin it illegal but who cares lol

Answer 8

A friend of mine told me it was illegal, but I continue to download every decent song that I like for my iPod. I just downloaded 26 songs this morning. If I get arrested for getting music from limewire, you'll be the first to know. Living life on the edge, ho ho ho. :-)

Answer 9

LimeWire is a peer-to-peer file sharing client for the Gnutella network. It is free software released under the GNU General Public License. Limewire was the first file sharing program to support firewall-to-firewall file transfers, a feature introduced in version 4.2, which was released in November 2004.

LimeWire is written in Java and therefore runs on any computer with a Java Virtual Machine installed. To facilitate installation for casual users, installation packages are available for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and in the RPM format for Linux. Support for Mac OS 9 and previous versions has been dropped with LimeWire 4.0.10. The Windows version of the LimeWire installer includes a version of Sun Microsystems' Java installer which will download and install version 1.5 of the Java Runtime Environment if it detects the machine does not have a recent version of Java installed.

LimeWire uses the SHA-1 and tiger tree hash cryptographic hash functions to ensure that downloaded data is uncompromised. Although researchers have identified possible vulnerabilities in the SHA-1 algorithm, because LimeWire does not rely on SHA-1 alone, these vulnerabilities do not have many adverse implications for LimeWire's verification of downloaded files.

Lime Wire LLC, the developer of LimeWire, distributes two versions of the program; a basic, free version, and an enhanced version (LimeWire PRO) sold for a fee of US$18.88, or available to download from LimeWire itself, which the developers claim offers faster downloads.[1] Prior to April 2004, the free version of LimeWire was distributed with a bundled program called LimeShop (a variant of TopMoxie), which was considered by computer security experts to be spyware. Among other things, LimeShop monitored online purchases in order to redirect sales commissions to Lime Wire LLC. Uninstallation of LimeWire would not remove LimeShop. With the removal of all bundled software in LimeWire 3.9.4 (released on April 20, 2004),[2] these objections were addressed.

Being open source, LimeWire has spawned several forks, including LionShare, an experimental software development project at Penn State University and Acquisition, a popular Mac OS-based Gnutella client with a proprietary interface. Researchers at Cornell University developed a reputation management add-in called Credence that allows users to distinguish between "genuine" and "suspect" files before downloading them. An October 12, 2005, report[3] states that some of LimeWire's open source contributors have forked the project and called it FrostWire. The FrostWire project has a beta release, which is claimed to be equivalent in power to the nonfree version of Limewire. The FrostWire developers emphasize that they will never place any sharing-related restrictions on the client.

According to a June 28, 2005, report in The New York Times, Lime Wire LLC may stop distributing LimeWire due to the outcome of MGM v. Grokster. However, new versions are being released (4.10 released on March 18, 2006) with various new features. On September 25, 2005, it was reported that Lime Wire LLC was working on a version of the program which will refuse to share files that lack valid license information.[4]

On June 21, 2006, Limewire 4.12.3 was released. Version 4.12.3 includes a new option to filter out material that copyright owners have denied access to. In practice, many of the so-called "legal" downloads on LimeWire have a spoofed license. That is, filesharers have marked that the file is uncopyrighted and legal to download, even if it is not.

July 26, 2006 brought Limewire 4.12.4 which the official website dubs as having "an updated interface, firewall to firewall transfers and increased performance for finding rare files and downloading speed."

On August 4, 2006, the RIAA sued Limewire, alleging that it was profiting from illegal downloads.[5]

On August 5, 2006, the BBC reported that "Limewire" and "Lime wire" were the fifth and seventh most likely search term to return links to malware respectively.[6]

Answer 10

yep, even if you pay for it it's illegal, because the money goes to limewire and not the artists who made the music/videos.

Answer 11

Kazaa, Limewire, Morpheus and etc they are illegal. Any peer-to-peer networks are illegal. But if you pick the plans that they have to use them then they aren't.