Limewire

[Col]

Is using the likes of Limewire to download music illegal?

[andy hughes]

It is, and as you may have seen from the weekend papers, the BPI are having a bit of a crackdown on file-sharing sites like this.

If you are worried, consider that there are individuals out there who are uploading brand new albums and sharing them with dozens, if not hundreds of others, and it is these that the BPI will target first. That said, they do seem to be moving up a gear in their efforts to prevent the sharing of files, and subsequent loss of revenue.

[MargeB]

What are his chances of getting caught as a downloader though andy?

[QmunkE]

All network traffic is monitored at some level. It's not hard to track where each byte of information goes - the IP of the user can be traced either straight to them or more likely through the user's ISP. Just had a lecture on this very subject - my university keeps logs of all network traffic, and uses their firewall to block bytes with the signitures of the various Peer-toPeer networks. We are being watched always!

However, as Andy says, it is major offenders who will be targeted first. So the moral is this: don't do it at all, and if you do, don't do it too much.

[andy hughes]

I would suggest that there is little profit in chasing the average downloader who gets the occasional track or album for their own use - as I said, it's the major-scale operators they are after.

As a word of advice, stay away from the bands and artists who are signed to major record labels, they have the finances and legal clout to be nasty. Plus, there are enough bands out there who are actively encouraging people to download their music - and if you can wait a couple of months, you can get a wanted album from your library and copy their copy ... allegedly.

[MargeB]

thanx. Allegedly lol.
QmunkE, and I quote ". So the moral is this: don't do it at all, and if you do, don't do it too much. " A line my mother maybe should have used on my brothers, in place of 'you'll go blind' or 'do you want all your children to be thin?' lol.

[Irissa]

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