That downloading a program from Limewire is ILLEGAL??? OK, I have openly admitted that I'm as dumb as a box of rocks, but I just found that out last night!!! I was asking for help with installing a program I downloaded--unsuccessfully, I might add.

One of the people on the forum informed me that I could be fined and imprisoned for doing that! How dumb am I? And then asking for help with it!!!

Lord! How embarrassing!

I thought it was a sharing thingy. **hangs head**

No more for me!

Should you not see me on here for a while....I'll be clinking my tin cup against the bars of my cell.........

not everything that you download is illegal...p2p can be used legally for all kinds of things.

Yeh and "peer to peer" also can get you the absolute WORST viruses around!

Not "all" are "illegal"..just MOST.

My advice (I am actually an expert in the field) DO NOT USE ANY "p2p" programs unless you know exactly what you are getting into. They can be VERY DANGEROUS from MANY points.

Most of the time it has to be an executable and if you are simply downlaoding pictures or home movies it can be safe enough if you are smart about it. Also it has been implied but not straight out said (as some claim to be idiots) file sharing programs of any sorts aren't illegal... it is what you share is illegal. also last I checked downloading isn't as much a problem as sharing is as far as legality goes.

Just figured I would clear some things up.

and here i've downloaded more music then any of these people you hear about on the news, and not a single thing has happened to me.

at last count music alone, i had over 3 terabytes of music and thats not counting what i've burned to cd's and deleted to make more room.

granted i did get a couple of nasty viruses but their easily delt with.....

same here,i'm kinda sneaky about it though

just thought i would clear you up, anything can contain a virus these days, pictures, music, videos, not just exe files. any file.

and no p2p programs of any sort are perfectly legal, it's sharing copy righted material that is illegal.

jeez! and i thought *i* downloaded a bunch...

god i'm not even sneaky about it, i thought that a few years ago and finally just said screw it. any given week i download 100 gigs worth of music and i have yet to hear anything concerning it.

LOL..ok NOOB. Sorry got to bust you on this one..jump on a p2p and give me 5 min, I'll have so much stuff pumped on your system, or just completely crash it, you won't have a chance.

Just because you have not had someone "hack" your system, does not mean its tough to do. A peer to peer is the EASIEST way to hack, because you open your system wide open to attack! Thats like you standing in front of a tank naked! Now stop the tank!

Just because it has not blasted you yet, or run you over doesn't mean it can't..obviously it CAN if it WANTS to. And that is what you ACTUALLY face on any "peer to peer" system.

So lets not be giving people any false sense of "securrity" on this matter. P2P is like giving the hackers a sit down invitation at your system!

downloading music is not illegal

can't help it, i'm a music buff.

unfortunatly your wrong, downloading copyrighted music is illegal. it's a violation of copyright laws to reproduce something without the authors permission. and thats exactly what your doing.

hehe...i prefer torrents.

If it is going to be an actual vius, ie do something to your machine, it has to be (or contain) an executable as pictures and audio clips themselves are just data that another program interprets (I do this for a living) so in order to cause any dmaage it needs to be an executable of sorts, otherwise you picture viewing program or music player will jsut get confused when trying to intepret the bytes it thinks are music as somehting else. If they are really tricky they can use exploits in the music players to attempt to launch another executable but that is harder to do and still requires the .exe to be on your machine. Most of those exploits tend to be fixed eventually and picked up on by virus checkers but they are always finding new ones anyway. for the most part if you are careful about what you download and run, you should be fine

torrents mise well be the same thing

limewire is a sharing community

the end's the same. sort of.

i like it because when i download an entire cd or collection, i can pick and choose what songs...and they come to my computer in nice little files and such.

like...the entire metallica discography i recently snatched.

your a quick one aren't ya?

There is a huge difference between you hacking me on a security explaoit in a peer to peer network and actually downlaoding a virus. compyers can get hacked all the time and by allowing people to connect via p2p makes it easier. I write programs that are designed to function on p2p envirements in a secure fashion, also work on ways of detecting network intrisuions in a private p2p fashion with secure multi agent data mining so careful before you start calling people a noob and assume because I have been smart enough not to get hacke yet that I am just "lucky"