Is Downloading Music From LimeWire Legal?
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The other day I was asked a pretty good question about LimeWire…
My 15 year old son downloaded some music for free. When I aksed him where he did this, he told me “Limewire.” As an old fogey, I have no idea if this is legal or not.
Technically… no.
Downloading music from LimeWire is not in anyway legal, unless the owner of the song has given their permission for it to be distributed for free (This is rare)
The Music Industry frowns on this, and takes action against anyone who offers a service that distributes free music. Thats what happened to Napster, remember?
However, what your son has done isn’t that serious. The FBI isn’t going to show up at your door because you downloaded a few songs.
Just be careful, go overboard, and you can call attention to yourself.
When you download a song on LimeWire or any other program, you become a Peer Node. This means other people can download the song from you. If you have 1000 or so songs, you can be classified as a distribution point of illegal music. That’s what makes them come after you.
But again, I don’t hear of this much. It usually the company owners that get chased after.
4 Comments
virtualdude
May 22nd, 2008
at 6:58pm
Yes it is illegal my friend’s mom got caught and got a warning but next time will be fined each song she has.
anthonym099
May 24th, 2008
at 2:32pm
Indeed it is rare for the company to actually distribute the song for free. I remember when napster came out at first, they offered thousands of songs to illegally download, but in the end I think they only went after the owners of the company. With most of the users online who download music illegally can’t afford it. So basically you can’t get blood out of a turnip. Not to promote downloading music illegally but if your going to do it, they have a useful program called peer guardian which is open source I believe. Peer guardian blocks government ip’s as well as some anti-p2p organizations. It’s free as well.
Steve
May 31st, 2008
at 11:53pm
In fact, in canada p2p networks for music is NOT illegal, as the record companies get a cut of the profits from each black cd ever sold, so in courts the jdge told them they get to keep the cd profits or make p2p distribution illegal.
Lovs2look
November 9th, 2008
at 4:06pm
So you can’t ever download “free” music using Limewire? What a load of bollocks!
Granted *most* of the music that is traded is probably doing so illegally, BUT just because you are using Limewire does not automatically make the sharing illegal.
There are actually millions of “free” songs available all across the internet, it’s just that they’re not that popular.