A friend of mine recommended Limewire several months ago. I've gotten a lot of material off this great file-sharing service, but only audio and only mp3s, and nothing suspicious or shared by less than 3 users.

Today I turn on my computer and I get this message through email:

The US Government has been monitoring your computer for the past 24 hours and has noticed a substantial amount of pirating. You have 48 hours to delete the material from your computer and to destroy any hard copies made. If you should choose to ignore this warning you will be fined. Fines vary by song and range anywhere from $150,000 to $300,000.

I was terrified. I was led to believe that Limewire was completely legal. What's going on?

I've deleted 100% of the files I've downloaded after this - no exceptions. I just need to know how this could happen on a legal file-sharing program.

I don't recall either LW or the Gnutella forums suggesting it was legal to downld copyright files! Perhaps you should back track thru your original steps of downlding LW: http://www.limewire.com/english/cont...loadfree.shtml

It is or was "your" decision to downld what you have or desire. I mean if you can buy it, then why not buy it? There's no such thing as ...

Well, I remember reading numerous times that LW was completely legal. My computer is now free of all the material, so I'm not too worried anymore.

The aforementioned friend downloads practically all of his music files from LimeWire, and he transfers many of them to me via AIM Instant Messenger, so I am particularly concerned about that.

EDIT: I followed your link and I see that it says nowhere currently that it is a completely legal program, but I am absolutely sure that it did when I first downloaded the service.

Maybe I was a bit unclear. The message, indeed, was from Investigation@riaa.gov. And I rarely give out my email address to solicitors, so I think this is real.

EDIT: Indeed, at , I found this paragraph:

A great deal of copyrighted material is available on file sharing networks. Please be aware that many files are not legal to share or download. Please do not download LimeWire software if you intend to use it for illegal purposes.

But, if you follow the link, you will note that it is the equivilent of the proverbial fine print, if you catch my meaning. I believe that it should be more prominent on the site to help prevent illegal use.

But I'm getting way too off topic.

This problem has been completely solved. It turned out to be like a good mystery story.

The friend I have mentioned is the one who sent me the email on one of those joke sites where you can send an email to anybody from anybody.

Admins, please kindly disregard this topic. And thank you to those who took the time to help me in my dilemma.

Thanks once again everyone! And Happy New Year!