Limewire...free AND legal?

[DungeonmasterCal]

This is not a thread to start a discussion on the ethics of P2P filesharing, but someone has told me that Limewire offers free and legal downloads of music, etc.

Is this true? Their webpage of course says it is, but we all know who wrote that....

Opinions?

 

[resistor]

Limewire is just a client for the Gnutella filesharing network, which is actually one of the oldest around (dating to the barely post-Napster days). With all such networks, the legality of any file you find on it depends entirely on the material within the file. If it's copyrighted and not freely distributed by the copyright owner, then it's not legal.

On a side note, it's impossible for any peer-to-peer network to make promises about the legality of files available on it. To do so, every file would have to be filtered through some central office, and then it would no longer be peer-to-peer.

 

[Darth K'Trava]

I don't recall the details but the lawsuit against Limewire was shot down.