anyone used Limewire?

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dreamcomputer2000

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Filesharing is like having unprotected sex

lol, nice analogy!

Are you talking about Limewire Pro or a website that is offering P2P downloads for a monthly/yearly charge?

Be very very careful, there are thousands of scam sites out there that trick people, and from your comment "This is paid download site" makes me think that you are on one of those.

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AntonyPaul:
Are you talking about Limewire Pro or a website that is offering P2P downloads for a monthly/yearly charge?

not sure which I am looking for.

Limewire paid site

and legal?

they used to offer something like a million downloads for $39.95 a year.
Even if it was 1000 it would be plenty for me.

On Limewire, I saw a question about it elsewhere and I remember it being an alternative to WinMx which I used. I now hear WinMx is back in business maybe as a paid and legal site.

Post the website if you're unsure.

Limewire/winmx cannot promise legal downloads for $xx per year. It's a scam.

ASKER

I do not know the website.
Someone else asked a general question about Limewire and viruses and whether the viruses were only the shady .exe files and would "excellent quality or good quality" be ok.
And what about the user number saying something like 35, were those files often infected.

So, there is no paid, legal and safe site?

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As addon:
what is gnutella: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnutella
what is limewire: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limewire

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so, are there any legal sites, that have a fee, and safe?

what do you want to do?

For music use amazon or itunes. (even napster.com)
For videos well also the same especially itunes

Any site that is selling links to "free" downloads of copyrighted works are operating illegal.

This can be gnutella, bittorrent or usenet. There is much free media available but any media have to come with a license, and it must clearly state that copying is legal. (creative commons etc.)

This is never valid for avatar, lord of the rings and whatever...

ASKER

older music 1950's and 60's and 70's.
P2P is fine, if the uploaders are using a legitimate, legal site, where I might pay a fee to download.

Youtube videos....Real Player offers a download option on every video, even 30 second commercial videos.

Never heard of some of the "bad" sites mentioned so I'd avoid those any way. I've heard of the others as well as WinMx.

Limewire as any other P2P program has the chance of allowing you to download data such as music, movies, photo's which can contain malicious virusses.
This is not Limewire itself that contains these, but the user content you download>

I would recommend using newsgroups to download data instead. Or Sharing sites such as rapidshare/megaupload.
Those still could potentially hold a virus,but less often.

The key is having a proper antivirus protection.

Make sure Limewire files are scanned during download, and/or before opening.

when people say they suffered, its because they were not careful or used some dodgy exe's much like what you might click and download on ads/popups.

Napster, one of the orginal file sharing software (from what I remember and used) are 100% legal and they claim to be able to play (download not so sure) back to 1955. http://www.napster.com

Using P2P you do run the risk of downloading something illegal even if that was not your intention.

What you want to look out for is music service providers.

such as www.emusic.com http://www.emusic.com/
and mp3.com http://www.mp3.com/

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bpinning

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Also. Only the software is paid for. Not content

The problem with p2p is you are not only downloading BUT also sharing that stuff.
So even if the sender is permitted to "broadcast" the music to you, you are not allowed to share (broadcast) for yourself.
If you do you are the best target for lawyers that work "in the name of record companies" .
Keep in ming that copyright especially for music/movies is longer then 75 years.

http://www.marthabeth.com/music_length_protection.html

The real change, however, is for so-called corporate copyrights (such as Disney's Mickey Mouse), which previously were afforded 75 years of protection, dating from the date of creation. After Bono, protection was increased to 95/120 years. Congress has the power, of course, to increase protection in addition to what Bono enacts.

Tolomir
(P.S. there are hacks that disable any physical upload of a file in a p2p software: against the p2p nature. But that is no help against layers they note each IP sharing "copyrighted_music.mp3" regardless if they receive a single byte of payload from the user.)

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The problem with p2p is you are not only downloading BUT also sharing that stuff.
So even if the sender is permitted to "broadcast" the music to you, you are not allowed to share (broadcast) for yourself.

....in the above statement, the last "you".....did you mean for they to read:
THEY are not allowed to share with me?

I read an article that said the "uploaders" are the ones that are doing the "distributing"
ex: If I upload a video, and offer it to the world, I am the "offender".

only if its a copyrighted video. if its your own or copyright free/distrubution rights free then its fine

Your download folder is by default your sharing folder too. So you need to keep moving downloads. I own a limewire copy but stopped using it ages ago. Too much junk, spyware, viruses. And honestly said most music is corrupted RIAA purposely uploads tones of junk mp3 via p2p. For the rest p2p only has naughty stuff and nothing else much decent. Its close to useless. Newsgroups and sharing sites are the easiest alternative. More secure too, and your not sharing illegal content.

P2p usually (and limewire for the bittorrent part too) works that you share also those files you are in the progress of downloading, so there is no way to move files. So while you are downloading you are content provider without a license.
Regarding the music, try eBay for 50,60,70th cd samplers - used music should be cheap there.

ASKER

Years back I used WinMx and had no virus issues. I think they shut down but I saw on another forum they are back in business.

WinMX got shutdown due to a lawsuit. Been down since Sept 2005 apparently but WinMX available thru third party modifications. Looks like WinMx is same as other p2p clients. Source : http://www.zeropaid.com/winmx/
they have a forum http://www.zeropaid.com/bbs/forumdisplay.php/25-WinMX where you might find more info

I would go with everyone's opinion here, and pretty much skip P2P.

You might have had problems on WinMX though not realized. Not all virusses show on AV's. Spywares years back had to be scanned for seperately.

Or you were pretty lucky. Working in IT I know that if a user has any type of p2p software installed, the chance of finding a virus is alomst 99.9%.

Download sites are faster, more secure, and a lot easier.
You can use a download manager such as "free download manager" or a paid one such as Internet Download Manager, or Download Accelerator Plus" to queue downloads.

Grabbit is good too for news sites.

As again. Many experts here advice not to use P2P. They can't all be wrong ;)

Just as a remark. You cannot expect any expert here to tell you how to find copyrighted music for free, including installation guides and reference URLs.

Your question is about limewire: we say it's a minefield, so consider other (legal) options.

Tolomir

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Michael Best

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Even against lawers?

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if AVG is that heavy duty, it must work good for Limewire, etc. or did you mean the opposite?

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http://www.pcworld.com/article/208895/limewire_shut_down_permanently.html

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points divided based on participation and followups.

Michael Best

ASKER

oh well, now we know the extent to which Limewire was a problem.

Years ago, when I found it (and it was a "pay" site, something like $39.95 a year for almost as many downloads as you wanted), I misplaced the name, found it recently, and became interested.

"Years ago, when I found it (and it was a "pay" site, something like $39.95 a year for almost as many downloads as you wanted), I misplaced the name, found it recently, and became interested."

Yeh, you've unfortunately been suckered into believing that just because you paid for the program you were entitled to download copywrited stuff for free. This has never been the case.

Just so you're under no illusion. Whenever you downloaded any softare/movie/program that wasn't freely available to the public, you were still taking part in "copywrite theft" doesn't matter one iota whether you paid $100,000 for limewire's "pro" package or zilch.

ASKER

well, which sites are ok for music and videos?