Thread: Omg Limewire Legal?

Double lol--one at the .exe, and one at the fish slap dance in your sig

RE zxc--that's called abandonware, and its been legal for a while...

Originally Posted by Tsen

Double lol--one at the .exe, and one at the fish slap dance in your sig

RE zxc--that's called abandonware, and its been legal for a while...
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Oh, I just found out about it a few days ago. And for me, music ends in .rar .

I can personally say I've never gotten any viruses or spyware after about three years use of Limewire. Except, that one time, when I got a little too cocky, and tried to download an older game, that isn't available anywheres near where I live.... But as music goes, I've downloaded over 3000 songs and never got any viruses/spyware.

But if the RIAA ever see this.... I never downloaded a single thing, and Limewire is a horrible, horrible program. I swear! >.>

I still buy CD's anyway, because I like to listen to the official versions of songs, with the best quality, and it's just nice to be able to say "Oh yeah, I have that CD". Plus, I like to support my favourite artists, but I'm not going to go out and buy a whole album because I like one or two of their songs.

Originally Posted by zxc

And for me, music ends in .rar .
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There will come a day when you just finish up a several-day download, but realise that the archive is encrypted.

Yeah, I avoid .rar's because some trackers require that the initial upload be in a locked archive. Usually the password is pretty obvious (like the URL of the tracker), but it's best to avoid that entirely.
And I buy CD's too, especially when I'm really fond of a band. I have bought all of Flogging Molly's CDs, for example, and several Real McKenzies ones (I even had to go WAY out of my way to find those McKenzie CDs...)
Usually, though, if I want to support a band I go to their concerts.

By the way, just a note: Abandonware is only legal if the company has more or less renounced their copyright. I think the original Doom is that way now, but I'm not entirely sure. Either way, typically only games produced by companies that have gone bankrupt or otherwise been disbanded are considered abandonware--just because it's old and not sold in stores doesn't mean it's legal. The original TIE Fighter game, for example (which is one of my favorites), is no longer sold in stores, but is not legal to download because LucasArts still holds and maintains the copyright to it.

Is downloading music a sin (ie. illegal)?
Perhaps, right now in the U.S. it is, because the record companies have the power to sway lobbyists to make laws in their favor. However, in no way, does that mean that it is innately wrong to do so.

In Japan, for instance, did you know they have CD rental stores normally conjoined with video/dvd rental. If you rent like 9cds the 10th one is free. They will ask you, would you like to rent them for one day? two days? one week? You could rent 10cds and come back in an hour, no problem. People do it all the time. The industry is geared towards NOT buying it! Thats because Sony music or Toshiba EMI don't have the clout necessary to overide public concensus and change the laws like they do in America.

However, when it comes to the video game industry, you better believe you can't copy games. Hell, you can't even RENT a game at a rental store in Japan. Most video game companies started in Japan so you better believe they have the power to change the laws. On top of that games are monopolized so they charge more than double the price america does for a game.

Does that mean America is ass-backwards for allowing rental video games? or Japan for allowing rental of music CD's?

Why would either industry (including movie) fear having a rental-like or free preview system? If you truly like it you'll buy it to show your respect and support to the artist/actor/company right?

The answer is quite simple. In actuality, all those industries fear from free promotion is eventual loss of revenue and in turn their power...by creating, selling, and promoting- utter wastes of time.

I think, people should be left up to their own devices in deciding whether to buy a cd/game/movie or not. This digital age gives the power back to the people instead of the big companies looking out for their own self-interests. Now, If you like the artist, movie, or game company, then you will do what is necessary to see that there is another album, or sequel, its only natural. Granted, you are more than welcome to be self-rightous by not downloading music or movies by saying its wrong. However, you only help to protect the big companies that churn out shite music or movies (like 'The Core' or 'Stealth&#39, and keep real independant artists and movies down. I would say dime-a-dozen pop music should be downloaded guilt-free as incentive to produce better music, and any independant artist with actual talent be given all the support of the fans. As an artist I wouldn't care if someone downloaded my music without paying for it... because- any promotion, is good promotion. That is, unless there isn't anything behind the music worth promoting. Then, all downloading an album does is, expose the one-hit wonders who lack anything more than a catchy melody on one of their songs when the rest of them are complete shite. Losing their power is what these big record companies really fear...and they should...because they are no longer able to pull one over on the public so easily anymore.

Ooor you just aren't paying for the music. And that's stealing. Yeah.

Well, whad'ya know. I was wrong, zxc was right. Effective Nov. 26th, all commercially unavailable software is legal as abandonware. There are catches, but I'm too lazy to read through all the legalese. Basically, the law was designed to legalize recreations of old software for obsolete hardware. It is NOT legal if the software is commercially available in a form that does not require obsolete hardware as a requisite for access, though. Basically, it means that MAME emulators for phones and all that, and DOS emulators for PCs are (mostly) legalized.

Originally Posted by Kaniaz

Ooor you just aren't paying for the music. And that's stealing. Yeah.
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Stealing is in the eye of the beholder as I stated...

It it were just the snotty record dealers (The ones that are snotty, at least) I wouldn't much care. But the artists of the music themselves are being majorly cheap shotted.

Is downloading illegal music a sin? Yeah, and I&#39;m guilty of it too. ><

I download. I acknowledge that it&#39;s stealing.

However, the only ones that really feel the effects are the major artists (Rolling Stones, Metallica, etc) and the record labels.

Since, 99.9% of my downloads are indie bands, I have a hard time feeling too bad about it. I&#39;ve been to 15 concerts this year where I purchased 10 t-shirts and 3 albums. All that money goes to the artists directly.

So, the moral of the story is; download if you want, but support your favorite artists&#33;

First of all, here are the facts about LimeWire. The Gnutella network consists of over 2 million PCs throughout the world that are connected over the Internet. As a p2p network, its technical (and legitimate) purpose is for users to share files with each other. Not copyrighted intellectual property, just files. However, Gnutella is often (mis)used for sharing music, movies, and software that certain companies claim (usually correctly) to be illegal. LimeWire is simply a GUI frontend to the Gnutella network. While some alternative programs are probably better, I will refer to usage of Gnutella as "LimeWire" for the purpose of this post.

Is LimeWire illegal? No, using the program in and of itself is not illegal. It&#39;s a piece of free (as in speech) software licensed under the GNU General Public License. Is using LimeWire to download copyrighted material that you did not pay for illegal? Very often, yes. Is it unethical? That depends on your views. Most artists don&#39;t receive more than 10% of the profits from their music because publishing companies tend to take advantage of up-and-coming talent (note that the latter clause is strictly an opinion). You are hurting the big corporations much more than the artists by pirating music. It might be more ethical to pirate the music and send the artist a few bucks over PayPal than to purchase the album legally and throw the fruits of the artist&#39;s toil into some wealthy executive&#39;s pocket. Is breaking the law unethical or a sin merely for breaking the law? God only knows (if your religious beliefs accommodate the phrase).

Arguments certainly can be made in favor of the piracy route. For example, you might find you like a certain artist from sampling his/her music at your own leisure, and then you end up buying several albums that you wouldn&#39;t have otherwise. Also, many publishing companies employ digital rights management and other horrible misuses of technology to restrict your freedom to use legally purchased music. Whether or not this infringes upon the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 I know not, but it can prevent users of free operating systems (e.g. GNU/Linux) from obtaining music legally, practically asking them to resort to piracy. Lastly, the RIAA and friends aren&#39;t any more ethical than the pirates themselves. They have sued the families of several dead people, among other things.

If you choose to pirate music, understand that you are breaking the law. I myself don&#39;t pirate music, but then again I don&#39;t listen to a lot of music. In the end it comes down to what you feel is right. If you want to take the nihilist route, abide by your own ethical beliefs and screw the law. If you believe it is more ethical to abide by the law, obey it and have the peace of mind that you won&#39;t be sued or incarcerated. On that note, adieu.

Well put. wraped things up nicely

Here in Canada, it is still NOT illegal to download, meaning there&#39;s no such law that states it&#39;s illegal. Hell, i even remember there was a judge in Quebec that clearly said downloading copyrighted media from the internet is NOT illegal, that was some 2 years ago. But of course, sharing the downloaded material is clearly illegal.

I believe this situation will not last forever, the RIAA and movie industry are constantly pressuring the government to do something about it. But in the meantime, i do download a lot of stuff, mainly Indie-music, then buy the record if i like it.

I don&#39;t really understand how pirates can argue their case on any moral ground at all. "We are taking things without paying for them". OK, so they&#39;re overpriced, but this is the point: you aren&#39;t being forced to buy music. So you don&#39;t buy it if it costs too much, then they get the point when revenues go into a freefall.

But instead everyone pirates it, the RIAA finds a pretty great reason to get pissy, then &#39;pirates&#39; have the audacity to be offended, surprised and horrified when the RIAA starts suing people up the wazoo for "goodness me, that&#39;s a lot of money&#33;". Uh, yeah, because when you break the law you get sued. Weird isn&#39;t it?

DISCLAIMER: I pirate music and I have no intention of paying back the artists (which kind of undermines the &#39;it&#39;s for sampling&#33;&#39; scenario since it just doesn&#39;t work). At least I don&#39;t think I&#39;m on some sort of moral high ground.

Originally Posted by Kaniaz

DISCLAIMER: I pirate music and I have no intention of paying back the artists (which kind of undermines the &#39;it&#39;s for sampling&#33;&#39; scenario since it just doesn&#39;t work)[/b]

Well, speak only of yourself.

Weird Al Yanchovic sings about this topic in his song called "Don&#39;t Download This Song", of course I went and did it anyway...

Kaniaz, you said you dont understand how pirates can argue. As I said before, doing said acts is only considered a &#39;pirate&#39; in the countries with said laws against &#39;pirating&#39;. However, I would say we made pretty good cases to the contrary, if I do say so myself. Someone has yet to refute my point about different countries allowing different things. Which country is in essence right? I&#39;m american but I live in Japan. Currently, Japan doesn&#39;t have anything against downloading music. Does that mean I apply myself to Japanese or American law? Would I be extradited to the U.S. because I am a citizen? The answer is no. I highly doubt U.S. law applies worldwide, otherwise countries like Thailand and Phillipines which sell bootleg DVDs and such would already have been cracked down upon. The U.S. isn&#39;t the &#39;end all, be all&#39; in moral standards and rules so just because one person, or country for that matter, believes it&#39;s wrong doesn&#39;t in turn make it wrong.

The U.S also railroaded it&#39;s pointless anti-marijuana campaign across the globe at the beginning of the 20th century. Strong-arming countless countries to follow suit. Japan being one of them. (sidenote: did you know that a simple small marijuana possession charge in Japan can have you see significant jailtime?) Most japanese have the idea that marijuana is an injection drug the likes of heroine. They also believe every american owns a gun. The level of naivety of the japanese people, and propaganda they have been spoonfed since birth is staggering. However, I digress.

My point being, do the laws created mean something is innately wrong? Undeniably, no.

Of course, you would have to be a fool not to follow the &#39;When in Rome, ...&#39; mentality, but I think the idea of eventual free music, is a great one. Definitely not criminal. Music is supposed to be about sharing a feeling, not making money, anyway. If someone truly made music they would know this to be true. Greed should not be a factor in making music. If the music is good, money will follow naturally. For example, the band &#39;Smashing Pumpkins&#39;, released about 40 songs for free available only on the internet just prior to retiring as thanks to the fans. Now, that&#39;s definitely understanding the idea of true music.

Well some people do it as a profession... I bet they realized that music is about sharing a feeling... but the feeling wouldn&#39;t be able to get &#39;shared&#39; anyways if the person wasn&#39;t getting money. People need money, and a lot of them don&#39;t have time to make CDs just so people can pirate for free. I download... a lot... but huge bands really aren&#39;t suffering too much... they are still incredibly rich. As someone else said... concerts and the such is where they get a lot of their money.

About your point... there is no "right" country anyways, it&#39;s just their laws.

I don&#39;t think many people realize that MOST musicians work really hard to get money... there are not a lot of huge bands who everyone buys records from.

I download music and everything, but definitly don&#39;t agree with the statement that "music is something to be shared because its art&#33; They should give it for free&#33;" Well, for one, artists sell their work. People don&#39;t give away paintings. Secondly, if music was all free... do you REALLY believe that there would still be a huge amount of music flooding to be ABLE to be downloaded? I doubt it... not a lot of people have time to make music, not to mention it costs money to profesionally record their music.

Guys it&#39;s simple

Johnny makes a song and says "You can have my song if you pay one dollar"

Billy says, "Oh I&#39;ll just get it from somewhere else then" and gets a copy from Sandy.

Johnny gets mad and tries to ruin the system in which Billy is getting free copies of Johnny&#39;s music from.

The bottom line: You are not paying for something that costs money

With all due respect ataraxis, you are preaching to the choir.

You make it sound like the artist suffers for their craft. Well they do. However, they suffer despite the monetary setbacks, not for the reasons you may think. Making art isn&#39;t a chore or task assigned to you by a superior like a 9 to 5 job. It is our escape, our vacation from the drudgery of it all. An artist sacrifices their time and money for their craft because it is as much a necessity and part of them as eyesight or hearing.

If you haven&#39;t taken the time to check out my signature, I do make music, have loads of equipment, and am in a sh*tload of debt as a result. The lack of possibilty of professional success or financial freedom from making music doesn&#39;t waver my desire or resolve to make the music. Oh, and by the way, people do give away or sell paintings for super cheap...it&#39;s called prints. I know many artists that do that. and that IS what real art is about. I&#39;m sorry, but it is. Did Mozart die a pauper, or living it up like P.Diddy? Did that stop him from making his music? Hell no. And, who of the two is the true artist? That goes without saying.

Anyone with jaded views of fame or fortune while making their music or art will have it show in their work because their intentions lie not with their art, and they will find themselves fighting an impossible uphill battle. The point is to have fun and try and share it, and hope that perhaps one day, if you have talent, you will be pushed into the &#39;Limelight&#39;, pardon the pun. There is no use speculating on what else an artist might think because I assure you if they think differently they aren&#39;t true artists.

OK, so you&#39;re telling artists what you think art is and how dare they even pretend to be true artists because they don&#39;t give things away for free etc? That&#39;s great.

That&#39;s a pretty bold statement SolSkye. Humor me for a second, I&#39;m just curious what exactly is a real artist?

Originally Posted by Kaniaz

I don&#39;t really understand how pirates can argue their case on any moral ground at all. "We are taking things without paying for them". OK, so they&#39;re overpriced, but this is the point: you aren&#39;t being forced to buy music. So you don&#39;t buy it if it costs too much, then they get the point when revenues go into a freefall.

But instead everyone pirates it, the RIAA finds a pretty great reason to get pissy, then &#39;pirates&#39; have the audacity to be offended, surprised and horrified when the RIAA starts suing people up the wazoo for "goodness me, that&#39;s a lot of money&#33;". Uh, yeah, because when you break the law you get sued. Weird isn&#39;t it?

DISCLAIMER: I pirate music and I have no intention of paying back the artists (which kind of undermines the &#39;it&#39;s for sampling&#33;&#39; scenario since it just doesn&#39;t work). At least I don&#39;t think I&#39;m on some sort of moral high ground.
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Right. And while all that is correct, you know the RIAA has the biggest trouble getting some granny to pay because she pirated tons of music just because she said "Someone broke into my network and downloaded all the music", right?