Limewire: Feedback. Is it safe?

I've noticed a few of you mentioning Limewire. I'd like to use it, but how safe is it? I had a friend who had all her drive corrupted while on Limewire, but that was some time ago. What's the word?

I use Limewire quite a bit on my iBook and occasionally on my kids' eMac. It works well most of the time but will occasionally freeze up or just disappear. But for the price, it can't be beat.

Have noticed no corruption of the hard drives.

I use it on my G4 and have had no problems.

Technical issues aside, there are legal and ethical issues as well.

It is actually not illegal to download music that you haven't paid for, but it is unethical.

It IS illegal to provide music for other people to download.

If you download music on a program like Limewire and then move it to a new folder on your hard drive so that other users can't in turn upload it (thereby insuring you don't break the law), you are considered a leech or a freeloader by the Limewire community.

Any way you look at it, you lose.

Your IP address can also be logged.

Big brother is watching you.

My personal ethical stance is to only download and upload music that is not available for purchase through any means that will benefit the artist. In other words, music that is ONLY avaialble via places like used record dealers and thrift stores is OK; anything you can buy new (on line or in a store) is NOT. And legally, even this point of view is quite shaky.

...and FWIW, I have found Acquisition to be more stable than LimeWire for the Mac.

There is no law against downloading a song from a private individual for private use. I know some record companies have scared people witless and forced them into "settlements" over downloading, but what a record company's lawyer says and what the real law says are two different things. If I were ever served by a record company, I'd say fine. Take me to court. And my defense would be: show me the law that I have broken. For there is none.

But ethically, well ... I'll put it this way. I am a published author, but I do not feel cheated when someone checks out one of my books from the library, I do not feel cheated when someone gives one of my books to someone to read without writing me a royalty check. These people are getting "free" reads. But that just goes with the territory.

But the most important thing I think is this. These crooks and idiots who run the record companies have priced CDs at an unconsciencable level for far too long. With peer-to-peer file sharing they are going to have to lower prices or become exinct.

It is precisely like the movie situation. I well remember when VCRs first came out and Hollywood howled that these things would put them out of business, and they fought VCRs tooth and nail. The Supreme Court ruled in the VCRs' favor, and Hollywood grudgingly offered tapes at $100 a pop. Anyone remember those days? Well, copying tapes was rampant. Then they lowered prices to $50. Copying was still rampant. On and on it went, until they hit $14.99 and that was the sweet spot, that was the price where it was less trouble to buy a tape as opposed to copy it and ... and well, the revenue stream from tapes (and now DVDs) has been one of the hugest bonanzas in the history of Hollywood. Everybody won.

So let the record companies break down and offer CDs at a reasonable price. I'd say $7.99 is the sweet spot. I'd be spending far more on CDs overall if that were the price, and I bet a lot of other people would, too. But the record companies won't do it out of the goodness of their hearts. They've got to do it because the market forces them to.

I have heard that there can be problems with the free version of limewire, as it does have bundled spyware. I've had no problems with the paid version of Limewire.

I use Limewire as a personal listening station. When I read about a band that sounds good to me, I download some of their stuff. If I like it, I buy the CD. If I don't, I just delete the files. I've blown way too much money on shitty CDs to take chances anymore. I throw away 90% of my downloads these days. I don't want to get into a "most new music is crap debate", because, well, it is, and that's that. :wink:

I used it for awhile, but found it slowed my computer down considerably.

It is likely to have a lot of spyware and adware in it. If you get Limewire installed, get Spybot installed and run it and see just how much crap Limewire loaded on your machine. It's not worth it.

On 2005-03-11 19:29, Satan's Sin wrote:

But the most important thing I think is this. These crooks and idiots who run the record companies have priced CDs at an unconsciencable level for far too long.

hearing talk like this really burns me up. Everyone out there seems to think that downloading only hurts some big faceless corporate megalith that has money oozing out its sides. When Napster was at its peak, my small, self-run, indie record labels' sales PLUMMETED. Napster used to have a feature that let you see how many times a song had been downloaded from any given user... based on what I saw (of my own copyrighted works), I could have had a nice successful career. Instead, I had to quit the business alltogether, as did several of my fellow label owners. Also, small labels don't have the resources to protect their copyrights like the big guys do.

Now, I work behind a desk in a job that I can't stand instead of doing what I love.

Think about that next time you're stealing a file.

-Z

Thanks all! I've heard alot about the spyware. I actually do have a problem with "taking" music. (The stuff I would download is Christian Indies, not exactly the best witness.) I never thought about the ethics part, just wanted to sample some newbies.

I really don't see the difference between downloading a (copyrighted) file from the Internet for private use and going to the library and checking out a (copyrighted) book, or DVD, or CD. The authors of these works in the library aren't getting any sort of royalty for this "free read."

I really and truly think the music industry would come roaring back with both barrels if they just lowered their prices. It worked for the movie industry. In fact, their revenue stream from DVDs is greater than for that of the theatrical release.

Anyone remember a couple of years ago when Universal Music Group (I think) lowered their prices by 33% across the board? That was an attempt to lower prices, but the retailers wouldn't hear of it. The retailers considered this "found money," an extra 33% for them whenever they sold the CD at the unchanged list price. And as anyone with eyes has seen, record stores are nearly gone. I say they dragged the knife across their own throats.

This is a market-driven economy, and when there is an alternative to something that is priced outrageously, people will take that alternative. A vendor in this situation can dig in his heels -- and not pass along a 33% discount, say -- and refuse to face the reality of the new situation. Or he can change. The movie industry reacted to this and came up with an alternative to copying (i.e., lowering prices, as opposed to filing these ridiculous lawsuits), which I guess means smarter people are working in the movie industry, as opposed to the music industry, which seems amazingly intransigent.

Now this thing with the iPods, with the 99-cent per song downloads, this is more like it. I think 99 cents a song is fair. And evidently so do a lot of other people.

And with most new bands only able to come up with one or two good songs and an album of filler, iTunes is the perfect solution. It does spell the eventual death of the album, I fear. Everyone just wants to hear their favorites on shuffle on their iPod. Hell, that's why they made the iTampon, er, I mean the iPod Shuffle.

I've never had any problems running Limewire on my G4(ok, had it crash a couple of times) on a PC I'd be much more wary. Shareza has NO spyware at ALL, so it's pretty safe to use(as long as you don't download any files containing viruses)

Just don't let me catch you buying $30 crappy quilts made in china!(call me if you'd like to purchase one made by local quilter, but they'll cost you $300-$1,000 and they'll last over 100 years) :wink:

-Tikiwahine
Satin Moon Quilt Shop

Some file sharing programs have spyware type programs like "Gator" built into them, and that is part of the stipulation of downloading and running them - you must agree to install and run the spyware program along with the file sharing program. And if you run an anti spyware program, like SpyBot Search and Destroy or Ad-Aware, then the file sharing program won't work at all if you disable or remove the spyware program.

The solution to this problem is to download a file sharing program that is spyware free. Just do a google search for file sharing programs with the word "lite". Those "lite" versions are usually spyware free. The other added benefit is that the lite versions usually don't allow your IP address to be tracked either. There are a couple of "lite" file sharing programs out there that are really great.

You should run some kind of good anti-virus software, though, because you are downloading things off of someone else's computer. You should do a virus scan of each and every file that you download from a file sharing program, before you open and run them, or move them to another folder on your hard drive.

And it's good to run anti-spyware software in general if you are surfing the internet a lot, regardless of whether or not you use a file sharing program like Limewire. I recommend downloading both Spybot Search and Destroy, and Ad-Aware, and running them in conjunction - what one doesn't catch, the other will. The first time you run these, you might be amazed as to how much spyware has already been downloaded into your computer!!!

My son uses WalMart connect and downloads songs for 88 cents. I tried it and couldn't figure it out...until I realized it makes you pay for each song individually! So now I know why my Visa has 26- 88 cent entries! What a pain!