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LimeWire Finally Faces (or will face) Justice

posted May 3, 2011, 2:07 PM by Nathan Eliason   [ updated May 3, 2011, 2:20 PM ]
    LimeWire is a music sharing client for almost all computers, and has gained popularity rapidly. People of all ages and interests upload and download the latest music for free... Sounds a bit illegal, does it not? 
    It actually depends on where you purchase the music. You actually buy the rights to own a certain number of copies of a single song. For example, if you buy a song from iTunes, you can only share it with 5 mobile devices and have 5 computers register with the same content. 
    With LimeWire, it is only illegal if someone shares copyrighted material, such as music that you can buy from iTunes or other stores. If you are talking about 250 year old music, it is in public domain and all users have many more rights to it. So, LimeWire itself is not illegal, because they encourage only non-copyrighted material. The activity that millions of people did on LimeWire.com is illegal.
    Go ahead, click here to go to www.limewire.com. Doesn't work, does it? That's because the four largest record companies are in the process of charging Mark Gorton and his created company over a billion dollars for damages done by his company. His fine could range anywhere from 7.2 million to 1.4 billion dollars. And this isn't the first time LimeWire has had legal issues. Countless small advisories and warnings have popped up since the website itself did, all ignored.
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