Install Limewire - Limewire Basic is freely available to the general public. It's currently limited to 200 search hits, but that shouldn't stop you from trying it to see if you want to continue. Limewire Pro has no such limits and the upgrade fee is reasonable.

Several versions ago, Limewire (at least the one I tried) was loaded with adware. I was completely disgusted and dumped it from my system. However, the newest version that I just tried has no ad or spy stuff at all, at least not that I can find.

Installing Limewire Basic is fairly straightforward. You'll have to get past a bunch of skull and crossbones warnings about the perils of P2P. The only thing that's loaded is the program and Java runtime environment. If you decide to uninstall Limewire, there will be some Java files left behind, and the Java runtime environment will also remain.

Limewire Basic intentionally limits the number of files found during searches. This (of course) was done to get you to purchase Limewire Pro. The interface is fairly easy to use and ads are pretty low key.

Limewire serves as a media librarian for your PC. It displays music by artist, title, and other tags. The program also previews and plays music files and uses Windows Media Player to show video. It has a connection monitor where you can monitor incoming searches of your shared folder, as well as track files being uploaded from you by others. Limewire can also launch pages in a browser other than Internet Explorer.

Limewire - Limewire is a free program that allows users on the Internet to share music, video and other files. Limewire also allows a user to search for content on other users' computers and download those files. No centralized server or website is used to store files. Limewire directly transfers files from one user to another, hence the term "peer-to-peer" or P2P file sharing. It's more accurate to say that a file is being transferred instead of downloaded in the context of P2P applications. Limewire allows you to share or access any file type such as MP3, AVI/MPEG, JPG, etc. Because it is written in the Java programming language, it will run on Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and other operating systems.

Is Limewire legal? And what about those "transferred" files? That all depends on what you do with the software. Some artists make their music freely available on file sharing services, in order to gain exposure or because they just want to give it away for free.

Obtaining music on those terms via Limewire or a similar P2P service is perfectly legal and even encouraged. But copyright laws protect the creators of original works, such as music, movies, photos and artwork. Individuals who reproduce, distribute, or receive copies without the consent of the owners may be in violation of copyright laws. To put that in context, if you copy commercially available music or video files without paying for it, you're probably breaking the law.

Music downloads are a great way to get the songs you want without having to buy an entire CD. But you must pay attention to the legal issues. Record companies have been very aggressive about clamping down on copyright infringement.

The creation of legal music downloads came about because of complaints from artists and musicians. They argued that they owned their music, and it therefore should not be available for free downloading. They have a valid point. Besides the time and energy that goes into producing music, there are distribution and marketing costs involved. Musicians and recording companies rightfully expect to be compensated.

As a result, music download websites began popping up online. iTunes and Napster are two popular services. iTunes charges a nominal fee per song, while Napster charges a monthly subscription fee. There are also more than a hundred of sites that offer music downloads.

You can find legal music downloads in several ways. It is advisable that you go through reputable and well known sites. Shop around the 'net, ask friends for recommendations. Be sure to deal only with reputable sites. You don't want to run afoul of copyright laws.

Here's a list of some music download sites:

Music companies and artists were upset years ago by Napster, a website that allowed visitors to download and share music for free. Legal cases were filed against Napster and many people were charged for copyright infringement. After being closed down by the record companies, Napster and similar websites have revamped to provide legal music downloads.

Legal music download sites have replaced the sites of the past and are very popular. People have become comfortable with paying for the songs they want.

Free music is surprisingly easy to come by, even music by famous bands. Sometimes you can only listen to a song while you're online, but with the ever-growing popularity of broadband this is really no longer a problem. Sites provide free online music by almost any band you can think of. However, most people want to download songs and burn their own customized CDs. So how do we do that without violating copyright law?

The best way to avoid problems is to visit sites that sell music for a fee. Some will charge by the song, while others charge a monthly subscription. The correct choice depends on your preferences. If you plan to download a lot of music on a regular basis, the subscription route is the way to go. However, if you only pull enough songs to burn a couple of CDs and don't plan to do this often, then try the by-the-song approach.

In Peer-to-peer networks (P2P), there is no central server. Instead, all machines are connected and have acess to each other. The purpose of P2P is the sharing of files between nodes. In a pure P2P, all machines function as both client and server.

A few networks use a client-server structure for certain tasks. An example would be a file search function. Instead of the search request being sent to every machine in the group, a central server would handle the request. However, most P2P networks have no central server and are considered true P2P.

Peer-to-peer networks can be classified by what they can be used for:

• file sharing

• video and audio media

• discussion forums

One of the goals of P2P is that all clients provide bandwidth, storage space, and computing power. As new machines are connected and demand increases, the total capacity of the system also increases. The distributed nature of true peer-to-peer networks means that there is no single point of failure. This increases reliability and allows the network to continue operating in case one or several nodes go offline.

WinMX is a peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing program that runs on Windows. The original developer abandoned support of WinMX in September 2005, but a community of programmers brought the service back online. WinMX remains one of the popular P2P clients.

WinMX, if properly configured, can share almost any type of file. Files over 2GB will not be shared, and must be split into chunks smaller than 2GB. Although there is no limit to the number of files a user can share on the network, when a list of a specific user's files is requested (by the browse function) only a limited amount will be shown. However, all the shared files will be visible to a general search by filename.

Limewire will run on any computer that has the Java Virtual Machine installed. Installation packages are available for Windows, Mac and Linux. The Windows version of Limewire includes Sun Microsystems' Java installer which will download and install the Java Runtime Environment if necessary.

Is Limewire legal? That all depends on what you do with it. Copyright laws protect the creators of original works, such as music, movies, photos, etc. People who reproduce, distribute, or receive copies without the consent of the owners may be in violation intellectual property rights. If you copy commercially available music or video files without paying for it, you're probably breaking the law.

But there are some exceptions to the rule. If you don't own a particular CD and you download all the songs without paying for them, you are clearly stealing. But what if you bought the CD, and somehow scratched it to the point it will no longer play? In such circumstances, it should be acceptable to download the exact same files in order to burn a replacement CD. You are not stealing anything because the CD was already paid for. Keep your receipts to prove it!