Well, both my kids and myself use LimeWire on our home network, and my initial concerns were easily allayed. Checking the hard drives once in a while can take care of porn problems, whether the files came from the Web or wherever. Trying to teach them to be responsible file sharers while learning myself has been educational and interesting. No viruses, etc, but we use Macs. I have had to buy new equipment to keep up with the bandwidth demands

The copyright situation is a mess, and the laws are changinfg almost daily. If they are downloading copyright songs, then that is infringement in most countries. What country are you in? I can round up some links if you want to know more about this topic.

However, there are many tunes that are permitted for sharing: finding them is not easy though. See www.magnetmix.com for some examples. There are many independent artists hoping to be discovered through the file-sharing networks

If you are on Windows machines, then downloading anything from the internet is a threat. LimeWire itself has NO threats, but the content downloaded might.

I hope Peerless sees this--he's also a parent and has Windows wounds/war experience.

Cheers