LimeWire is not illegal. What you DO with LimeWire determines whether you are doing something illegal or not. LimeWire makes it possible for people around the world to share NON-COPYRIGHTED material. Unfortunately, most of what is available on P2P networks, like LimeWire, IS copyrighted and therefore, is illegal to download. There was a court case in October (you can Google the main words and find all of it) and I've added a bit here for you to read:
"A U.S. district court jury found a Brainerd woman liable for illegal music file sharing Thursday afternoon in the first such lawsuit to go to trial. The jury found that Jammie Thomas had willfully committed copyright infringement by downloading and sharing all 24 songs for which the record companies had sought damages, awarding them $222,000.
The companies accused Thomas of downloading the songs without permission and offering them online through a Kazaa file-sharing account."

The old adage, "You can't get something for nothing," applies here. SOMEONE associated with EVERY copyrighted song, movie, etc., MUST be paid when a copy of the material is made. If you download and listen to a copyrighted song, it is just as illegal as putting it into your ipod. You copied it without the owners written or expressed permission.

Will you get caught? Who knows...SHE did.

Just remember, if it's popular, it is probably copyrighted. If you didn't pay anyone for it, and the person who OWNS the copyright (meaning the publisher, artist, or whoever, NOT the person who bought the CD) didn't give you written permission to copy it, it's illegal. I believe LimeWire shows you many places where you can get music that is freely shared by the copyright owners. It's usually new bands and not so much mainstream artists, but some of it is really good.

I hope this helped you.