You did not subscribe to a legitimate LimeWire Pro version if you paid £20, because you paid too much for it. The effective prive is only US$18.88, i.e. about £10.68 (with the current rate of 1.7686 USD for 1 British Pound), half the price you paid.

Even with international transaction fees for your credit card, this should not have reached as much as nearly £10.

Most probably you've been scamed, and you have downloaded an incorrect version of LimeWire, possibly hacked with plenty of additional spywares. I recommand you uninstall it, check your system against a good antispyware and an antivirus, then download and install the free Limewire program from the official www.limewire.com web site.

The normal procedure is first to try Limewire Basic for free, and if you like it, you can buy Limewire Pro at $18.88. If you did not use the Limewire.com website to buy your version, there's nothing that LimeWire can do to help you recover your money from the scammer. In that case, you've been stolen...

I still can't understand how users think they will get better programs by paying for a more expensive program that evidently has no recognized support, no user community itself, no recommandation from any other online software review website, simply by following any kind of link they find through random websites found in advertizing banners or in poor web search engines.

Isn't there enough links in Google and major download sites that speak about the official LimeWire or its active communities like this forum?

Don't blame Limewire if you use a version that you have downloaded from an untrusted source.

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If you still think LimeWire is CRAP! then try Phex or FrostWire. they are also free.

Frostwire is exactly LimeWire with just the name changed, but its copyright changed as well, and all credits to LimeWire removed (illegally according to the open-source GPL licence)

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yea i know it a clone but did thte soruce code changed? i mean in FrostWire, it could work differently than LimeWire but the same way

Its getting a tad bit silly. I dont understand why people just dont go to:www.limewire.com and order the Pro for 18.88. I cant imagine that people are so easily scammed by this? I dont get it. I really dont. Its amazing me and scaring me at the sametime. You dont even need to pay for anything, P2P is free and always has been. You dont need to pay a single dime for it. Ive used it for years and have never paid a single penny for any pro. Basic works just the same way as pro, you get connected to the gnutella network, not limewire network. Its the same files no matter what app you use and paying for a pro version does not make downloading legal. Its still illigal to download copyrighted material, no matter what program you use.

Why do you think that people buy LimleWire PRO? First they are given opportunity to use the free version. Then if they like it, and want to support its development they donate to the project by buying a licence for the Pro version.

There's nothing wrong there, and in fact all open-source projects are collecting money to finance their development or the hosting of their website, by using non-mandatory donation systems, or making campaigns to collect money, or by proposing featured merchandising.

LimeWire PRO is just that: a small donation to the open-source project, so that it can pay people working on it permanently, and that must still find a way to live, pay their rents, eat, have holidays some time (like you: would you accept to work without being ever paid? may be if it only consists in donating a small part of your time, but not if you work permanently).

So it requires a business: even the GNU Foundation performs some business to finance its activities (the foundation sells CDROMs and merchandising, and it can sell separate commercial licences for the software it has created and released to the public under the GPL or LGPL and that other commercial companies or editors want to use without binding their software or content to the GPL too; as well the GNU Foundation organizes conferences, sells educational courses, and earns from the books it publishes and that you can buy in regular bookshops, or directly from the Foundation).

You're dreaming about what a free software is, and why it can exist for your benefit. The principle of free software is that you benefit from it, and then can contribute too, either by participating to the project, or by donating to a fund that finances its development. You are not required to do it, but lots of people do that, because they don't want the project to be stopped and they do need the software, want corrections and enhancements. This is a very moral give-give trade between developers and users.

The difference between free software and proprietary software is that all is given to fit your needs, and you have the right to modify it. You can also distribute your modifications as well, and even request some money for this distribution, provided that you respect the original authors. You are free to try, and free to delete the software at any time. You are not tied nominatively to another person or company as soon as you acquire its licence. The economical model is differentfrom commercial softwares but it's still a business.

Suppose you take everything wihout donating, and everybody does the same, then no free software would ever exist because there would be nobody to create it, and nobody willingto distribute it.

This is not a scam; unlike the many that have florished that collect moeny without participating to the project, and that abuse their customers with falsified trademarks and copyrights, and without even crediting the true developers of the software they distribute (and often pollute as well by integrating adwares and spywares which are not even present in any source...).

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You misread my post. Im talking about the users who are paying for a fake/scam instead of getting the real thing. No need to get defensive on me. People are being mislead and conned into thinking its be legal to download if they paid for the program, and, all Im saying its not. Whether you pay or use the pro and dont give me the high and mighty excuse about supporting open source. P2P HAS always been free up until Napster folded then all the greedy programers decided to charge users for a pro version which is a joke because its STILL a P2P app and STILL does the samething as a free P2P app. We all connect to the gnutella network. NOT Limewire. People are getting confused about WHAT THEY GET if they pay and all Im saying is, you get nothing different in a pro than you would with a basic. I dont care what features they add or take away, why should I pay or anyone else for a pro version just to download the same files for free? Its called trying to get rich off P2P.

added: and so far from what I can see on here, the scam sites are making ten times more money then Limewire. If they kept it free, they'd be no need for scam site.

Your immediate above assumption is completely wrong !!!

Scam sites do exist as well for free programs that have no official paid versions, even the most prestigious ones.

You'll find paying scams for the GNU C compiler, for The GIMP, for FrostWire (see www.frostwire.com, the original, versus www.frostwire.org, the scam, as well as this thread in these online forums: http://www.gnutellaforums.com/showth...=&pagenumber=1).

Scammers are even repackaging and renaming commercial applications as well, also abusing their licences. These are criminals that make illegitimate money by stealing on the work of others, and even stealing money from their "customers" by not providing the promissed additional service, or by charging them multiple times, or by stealing their identities for other usages.

In addition, if they provide you with some software, the software is too much often hacked and filled with trapdoors and spywares, or have been hacked to much that they do not perform some basic functions or will crash more often than the original app, as these hacks were not tested...

Scammers are not programmers, they just want to make money quick (and yes may be they are earning more money, only because they don't spend anything in the development process and they don't want to pay people to do their job). So their activity is often linked to other similar ones like spamming for "promoting" their "product", or subscribing to advertizing networks (that they include rapidly in the hacked installers of the programs they distribute, often without having to modify lots of things in the program itself).

Finally, scammers have something common with spammers: they don't reveal their true identity (their only known identity is their domain name on Internet, all the rest is unverifiable or inaccessible). They use fake company names, publish no verifiable street address, you won't find them in any yellow pages, their business name is not registered, and the only contact you can have is with some email address in the same domain name as the web site which is promoting their spew.

Even the domain name registration contains fake addresses and names. If one seeks about those address, you may also see that they have used stolen identities. When this is discovered, those domain names are parked by their hosting company, the doamin names resolve to another "no-reply" web site, and the ISP does not even receive any complain from the scammer who does not want to be identified. There are tons of examples of that (and really millions of domain names that have been parked by their ISP until the end of the yearly registration period, due to identity theft)

Fake domain names do exist because they were registered for a very small yearly fee, using stolen credit card numbers. This works often because the bank accept the payment without verifying well the identity. Sometimes the identity is real being associated correctly with the credit card number, but the people did not notice in their bank billing that their credit card was used for such small purchases (many people don't remember exactly what they bought, and do not control precisely their billing, especially for small purchases.) In addition any transaction form in their website is NOT secured by a SSL channel, meaning that the form will not be processed by a host in a secured domain, as this would require them to proove their identity to get a security certificate (so the transaction is not performed by a trustable bank: by filling this form, you give unlimited and uncontroled access to your credit card info directly to the scammer). There will be no PayPal payment offer as well (PayPal is a trustable bank as it has a wellknown and easily verifiable identity).

Also often, the bank accounts were created by spammers/scammers in fiscal paradises for the time of the transaction. If you track the bank, you'll find amny examples in the Comoros Islands, in Nigeria, or in small and poor islands in the Pacific. (If you are not convinced, visit for example the official governmental website of the Comoros website: there are local laws that legitimate this type of business, for the national interest, and they refuse all international investigation for suspect transactions). The address shown in their billing is also wrong, or do exist but was selected randomly in white pages in random countries and is not connected to the debited credit card.

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lol, verdy, that where i stop reading your post. you famous for a long word post. but i do know you made very good point.

Guys

GGT got taken in by a scam site, a site that seem to promise him everything he could ever want (forget the "too good to be true" factor ).

Now take a look at the picture below, can anyone honestly say that if they were game playing internet novices that they would not be taken in by such a site. The action man alone causes the pulse to quicken and the heart to beat faster. Man, I can't wait for that adrenaline rush.

Scam site are using more sophisticated advertising techniques to catch the "not so internet savvy" among us, and GGT just didn’t stand a chance (remember, he doesn’t speak or understands “geek” ) especially as it would never occur to him, and hundreds like him, to do a bit of reaserch into the site before parting with his money.

So people, in the face of such obvious advertising advances and novices not taking the time to check before parting with their cash, I see a bleak future of senior forum members forever more explaining the facts of internet life to angry novices.




UK Bob

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