The location part of my profile is fake, people.
I don't live in a dorm, chicken littles.

Doesn´t matter Peerless will find you in Dallas. :D

Morgwen

Thanks Morgwen :)

Ivan
In the dark we make a brighter light

good luck.

Oh, this thread has gotten off topic.

Limewire is not illegal and haven't heard anywhere that it isn't.
I agree with stief.

downloading maybe illegal, but that hasn't stopped anybody.
:)

This is exatly what we said before you told us your opinion...

There are people who care about laws, OK not many but I heard such people exist. ;)

Morgwen

To make it short: LimeWire is not only NOT illegal: It is completely LEGAL.

Try downloading "das klein wild vögelein". You won't get in any trouble for that, also not for sharing it, and that is true in almost every country of the world (except maybe countries, where music and fun are prohibited, like the extraterritorial shoe factories in some poor countries), since the song comes from the dark times of the middle ages, where you could get hanged for singing songs, which were clearly against any government, rich people or the church.
Its license allows you to share it, give it to whomever you want, etc.

So as long as you don't do anything illegal with LimeWire it is LEGAL to use it.

Same as with a fork: You are allowed to eat with it, comb your hair, even dig in the garden (I hope noone invented a law against that in the USA... j/k), but you may not scratch the window of your neighbors car or stick it down his throat, when you're angry.

LimeWire is a tool. It is you who decides how to use it (As is the internet, by the way and trying to coerce someone to commit suicide through a forum is also illegal).

The main threat that will expose users to risks when sharing copyrighted materials is the inclusion of DRM technologies within almost all tools allowing you to make copies for private use.

I have already suspiscion with various MP3 encoders (notably the iTunes encoder under licence of Fraunhofer/Thomson Multimedia). Don't forget that Fraunhofer&Thomon have already demonstrated the interest of the new MP3+DRM format that will be fully compatible with the MP3 format.

Apple, Microsoft and RealNetworks have already accepted this format. And they will integrate it officially at end of year. The users won't know whever the MP3 they create will be DRM protected. Already, you need to sign a licence and authorize the software to include cookies that will be recorded in the databases of these providers, made available to their advertizing partners but also to legal injuctions, or simply to any paries that claim a "public interest" to disclose these records.

Read the licence of iTunes for example. You'll learn lots of things on what Apple is allowed to do with your private data (your identity). Similar featured terms are in Windows Media and RealOne Player.

In a near future, the best tool to create MP3s could become dedicated hardwares built by Asian OEM manufacturers, if they can be imported, because you won't need to register and sign a licence to buy and use these appliances.

The end of year will be hot. I fear that lots of things will change in a very near future. This may explain why now lots of commercial services have started to be finally deployed to sell legal downloadable music on the Internet: these services now are confident that DRM will work and protect their investment.

Already CDDB has tracking features to help localte users that first share a copyrighted material, or to track illegal importators of zoned products. Read the user licence for the CDDB client embedded into your favorite player. FreeDb is a replacement, but FreeDb will not be supported by almost all commercial and popular products, unless there's a defence organized to create alternative formats, and a market organized to allow choosing products without DRM features.

Note that I'm not opposed to the principles of DRM, if this is used reasonnably to lower the cost of acquisition of legal products, and if there's a way to buy a freely redistributable copy of a copyrighted material.
Also we could campaign to have limited time for these copyrights. After which the licence could become free.
Providers or copyrighted materials must learn to trust their customers to keep them. Too many products are sold at too much high prices. And shamely the current concentration of producers into large "majors" will not help defend the public interest, unless the anti-trust laws are applied to keep a concurrential market.
Giants like Universal, AOL/TimeWarner, Disney, Microsoft, Sony an EMI are getting too strong. They are building anti-concurrential strategies of practices.
And artists are in danger: these companies are firing lots of artists around the world and are invading the place normaly reserved to distributors (radios, TVs, ...) which traditionnally were independant when choosing the content they want to braodcast to their auditors.
This means much less choice for the consumer... So file sharing must be kept legal to allow independant artists and producers to get an audience face to the big ones$$$.

so as long as i have my firewall up i cant get caught? SWEET!

You can hope so.
But you also won't get very good downloads, because you can#t download from other firewalled users.