My children would like to use LimeWire to download music for their MP3 players. Right now they use Music Match and hate paying $.99 per song.
I am concerned about
(1) Avoid spyware on our home/office network computers with a shared cable modem
(2) Legality
Does anyone have any reassuring words for me?

Paranoid parent

Limewire is free of spyware.

This is a problem. It depends on where you live, in Canada its legal in the most other countries its not.

In general downloading copyrighted material is illegal. Music Match has a license to do it, but the Limewire/Gnutella network consists of normal users who don´t have a license to upload the songs.

Morgwen

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

Read this for some info about spyware and .mp3s: http://www.gnutellaforums.com/showth...threadid=29014
As sberlin says, Limewire (the program itself) doesn't have any spyware. However, getting spyware will depend on what you want to download (and for .mp3s, as Morgwen says, playing them on another player will ensure that you don't get annoyed by malware)

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Infrared! LOL!

On another note, if the kids are looking to download as a way to save $.99, I'd call that unethical and discourage them.

If they are browsing to see what they like, watch their buying habits. Encourage them to buy the stuff they like. One of my kids likes movies, and has developed quite a collection of DVD's. It seems she uses filesharing to browse for movies, and then a few weeks later the DVD's arrive in the mail. So, her use seems ethical to me. She's buying more (often as gifts for friends) than she would before she started using filesharing.

There have been reports that filesharing helps sales, and watching what the kids buy, I'd say that is true.

So, while the legalities are unclear, the ethics seem simpler and easier to encourage.