What I don't get about Limewire?

The argument is that you have gotten music that you didn't pay for. It is not a matter of if you shared it or not. You are using it withoutcompensating the artist. Maybe they will find out that you downloaded songs and send you a bill asking you to pay or they will prosecute. Maybe they will never know anybody who downloaded anything. If they think they will make a lot of money, yes they will bother. But you did ask a hypothetical question, that is a hypothetical answer.

First, they have taken legal action against Limewire, LLC. A massive lawsuit was filed against them in August 2006 for allowing piracy on their network. The plaintiffs are asking a fine of $150,000.00 per file. The case has been moving forward slowly. Depositions were taken in January and February, and some of the Limewire developers who were deposed admitted that things didn't look very good for them. The program itself is legal (at this point). The problem is that downloading any file that's under copyright (commercial music, movies, TV shows, software etc) without paying for it is illegal. It doesn't matter what software you use to do it, the act itself is criminal. People who use Limewire to distribute and share open source software, or music by unsigned garage bands trying to build a fanbase are well within their rights to do so. Those who rip DVDs and CD etc and those who download those rips are criminals, no matter what software they use for their criminal acts. If you download on it, you're breaking the law and risking lawsuits, fines and criminal charges. It's like asking why they bust people who are buying drugs instead of the sellers - with no buyers, there would be no sellers.

I actually just read a judge's court decision where he says copyright infringement only happens if the item is "sold, leased, rented or distributed to the public". He ruled limewire was a "passive" distribution and not true distribution like the other person commented on. Goto torrentscan.com and read the news there.....its pretty cool for file share folks. I would suggest moving away from p2p sharing though........get into torrent files..........

Limewire itself is not illegal, they tell you not to put copy righted stuff on it for other people to download (but we all know that's what it's there for) so technically the people uploading the copy righted material are the bad guys.. apparently your a bad guy if you download it to..

they wouldnt bother me since im in canada and it is legal to download copyrighted material as long as it is for personal use and the rcmp said they have worse crimes to deal with crimes that actually hurt people

Well what i know that if you just burn CD's from limewire and sell them you would be sued for that fact. its just like they think its stealing music.