Lime wire is Not legal?

Question

If Limewire is not legal then how why is it advertised all over Yahoo and the site itself says nothing about it being not legal? Seems to me if it's not legal, the Goverment does not have far to go to shut it down. There is a whole career and corporate section on the site as well as a press area. I am still looking for the difinitive answer if it is legal to dl ANYTHING from lime wire not just music. It sort of sounds like a head shop-Pot is not legal but you can buy 500 types of pipes to smoke it from the shop. Is this what it means?

Answer 1

Owning a car is not illegal, but driving in one while drunk is. Same thing here, Limewire itself is not illegal, but you can do illegal things with it. So thats why you can download the software, why you see it advertised, and why it hasn't been compeltely shut down yet. Limewire does slip in the thing about not using it to commit illegal acts before you download. It is perfectly legal to download anything on Limewire that is not copyright protected.

Answer 2

Don't know what country you're in, but in the UK there's nothing illegal about software as such. Most software can be used for both legal and illegal purposes. It's likely that much of the stuff you could download using Limewire would be perfectly legal to acquire.

Answer 3

sharing the music with others is not legal - the site itself is legal - yahoo will take money from anyone who wants to pay for advertising
as soon as you upload to limewire to share or download a shared song you have broken the law.

Answer 4

Actually, the issue is now in the hands of the legal system. A lawsuit was filed against Limewire last summer for allowing massive criminal activity on their system. There are previous supreme court rulings that pretty much guarantee that Limewire will lose and be facing hundreds of millions of dollars in fines. Here are some articles on the subject of the Limewire case as well as information on legal downloading:

http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-6102509.html
http://www.slyck.com/story1258.html
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/7783/Arista+va.+Limewire+lawsuit+gets+a+schedule/
http://news.com.com/Supreme+Court+rules+against+file+swapping/2100-1030_3-5764135.html
http://news.com.com/The+Supreme+Courts+ruling+against+P2P/2100-1030_3-5764460.html
http://mp3.about.com/od/isitlegal/a/riaalawsuits.htm
http://www.chillingeffects.org/piracy/faq.cgi
http://www.goingware.com/tips/legal-downloads.html
http://www.riaa.com/issues/music/legalsites.asp
http://www.whatsthedownload.com/

Answer 5

"you can lead a horse to the water, but you can't make him drink" -Thats exactly what they think about P2P networks, they can supply the software, readily available to the public, but once you download protective content, licensed content etc...then "you" are breaking the law. It's a big stipulation, i know...but their not the ones downloading it, you are..hard to explain i hope this helps.

And I don't know where IT-Guy gets his INFO but We had a girl right in Battle Ground, WA that had 4000.00 dollar fines from downloading from Napster? How is it not illegal if you don't sell it? It is ALL illegal. Period. .Avi's, MP3's, Mpegs, etc...all of it in some way, unless it's Open source, which if it was you could get it safely on the web, its illegal.

Here read this (IT Guy)
"In order for legitimate services to continue their growth, we cannot ignore those who take and distribute music illegally," Recording Industry Association of America President Cary Sherman said. "There must be consequences to breaking the law or illegal downloading will cripple the music community's ability to support itself now or invest in the future."