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You cannot ban Limewire like they banned napster a long time ago. Napster had a main server and Limewire is P2P. PeerToPeer. Everybody who downloads Limewire makes the network bigger and faster. So if you would want to ban Limewire, you would have to ban the millions of users for the network to fall apart.

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VirusKillersM,
I own a hammer. It is legal. If I use it to hit you over the head, the action is not legal. The hammer did not commit the crime, either...the user (me) did. Should hammers be illegal because someone hit you over the head with it?

Johanna

[Johanna]

VirusKillersM,
I own a hammer. It is legal. If I use it to hit you over the head, the action is not legal. The hammer did not commit the crime, either...the user (me) did. Should hammers be illegal because someone hit you over the head with it?

Johanna

[lindsaywatt]

Downloading files which are still in copyright is not "illegal" unless you download it and then try to sell it to someone else pretending it is a "legal" copy. Tha twould be fraud. When you download, say, a file which belongs to Warner Brothers - a song, perhaps - then Warner Brothers can take a civil court action against you to order you to stop using it, and claim damages for the loss they have suffered.

most countries provide that if you download a file, and then try to use it for a commercial purpose (like making 500 copies) then you might suffer criminal proceedings, but mostly by downloading you just open yourself up to a civil action for payment - just like someone suing you for debt.

unless you do it commercially, you don't risk prison.

[dsenette]

i'll echo what the rest have said in that....it's not the program..but what the program is used for....if someone is sharing an item (let's say windows) that you CANNOT get for free anywhere legally...then you downloading it is illegal...and them uploading it is illegal...plain and simple...it's the same thing as going to a website and downloading a pirated versioni of windows.....if the original intent of the software, music, picture, anything....was NOT to be freely distributed by anyone who wants to distribute it...then any aquisition of this software (or whatever) is theft...and therby illegal...if some dude robs a jewlery store...then GIVES me the stuff he took....i'm still in possession of stolen goods and i go to jail...even though he gave it to me and i didn't steal it...plain and simple....doesn't matter how you got it...if it was stolen before you got it (or stolen by the fact that some goober decided to upload his legal version of the software).....then you and the person you got it from are stealing from someone....