To protect against lawsuits
 

Regardless of legality, is it possible or at least reasonably plausible that I could be sued if I just download files but don't share any? I mean, if 'they' were trying to sue file sharers and I don't share, I only download, will they be able to sue me? I want to know if it is reasonably possible for them and if they can and do sue people who don't share and only download some files.

There is a way to be totally safe from lawsuits. You download and upload as many files as you like, you just ensure that none of them is copyrighted. If you want copyrighted material, you buy it from the relevant outlets. I don't understand why you say "Regardless of legality" as I'm sure legality comes into it somewhere along the line.

I'm not sure that possible, reasonably plausible, and reasonably possible are terms that the legal mind would think about in preparing their case. Totality, on the other hand ........

It was an entertainingly ambiguous question and if you were running a book on the possibilities, I would have to be equally vague in predicting odds. :):)

Well let me clarify then. If all I do is download without uploading or sharing, do I have any real reason to be scared of legal lawsuits? Have people who didn't upload ever been sued? Has anyone on limewire who doesn't upload ever been sued? Any answers would be helpful.

ohh man,

i have been in file sharing for years now, and after about 5 years i got a letter in the mail with with lots of big legal words but actually saying:

we know you share and distribute copyrighted files, stop doing so or we will seu you. but that was with mIRC.

with P2P you don't have to worry about a thing, you can share even without being seud, since the P2P network is so vast and large, it's almost and i repeat almost impossible to seu everybody and in that it means anybody.

the only real way of seuing you is to get a court order to search your house and your pc, for stuff on it, if your house or computer contains any material that is copyrighted and is not paid for IE downloaded of the net trough non-legal methods, that being P2P or IRC or newsgroups or any other method out there, you can be seud, but no government will spend money on that because it costs them more money to collect evidence against you then what it will bring up, 1 down a billion others to go, just don't worry.

but to be absolutely safe and to calm your paranoid self, don't download anything from P2P networks, Newsgroups, IRC, or any other method that's not intended by the publisher of the file, movie, music, writhing etc. etc. to be the choosen method of selling the thing in question, then don't. so just go to the store and BUY whatever you want, or just relax and wait for your first warning wich i'm sure will never come.

also it's smart not to use a global nickname, meaning, to repeat using the same nickname in several community's, like on this forum, use anotherone for another forum or a game or whatever. also try ip hiders etc. etc.

nah man about that last paragraph i'm just kidding there :P

hope this helps and calms your paranoid soul

Personally I haven't been sued. Not many limewire users have to my knowledge. But what do I know? There are posts on the forum you can find using the search feature, which say that you have to be sharing over 1000 files to be at risk, One post said that cases were being brought against downloaders.... I tried in vain to find it ... I guess you have to make your own mind up. I don't lose sleep about it. I just wonder if you know something that might be likely to MAKE me loose sleep:confused:

no, its pure nonsence,

if there was a lawsuite agains any of the LW downloaders you would have knowabout it in the news and stuff, as i said i have big experience with filesharing, i think i transmitted about 900 terabyte of files before i got mail from the government with just a notice and a warning that they knew and would take action if i continued in the same way, so i'm talking about way over 1000 files, i'm talking 1,000,000 files and more. and afcourse i did stop useing that method (wich is faster for both sender and receiver) and i switched to p2p in those days when kazaa wasn't screwed yet, now i use LW since it has no Spyware and since i don't like kazaa, actually i used napster aswell, wich was the best program ever till they got sued :( because they used an illegal way of sharing (they stored data of wich file is where and made that known to the users if you want to know the specifics search in the archive of any large newspaper. anyways, don't sweat it, you won't get sued. not even if you share 10,000 files.

greetz Panic

Panic fire my question " I just wonder if you know something that might be likely to MAKE me loose sleep?" was actually aimed at heavensdemon ... It's good to have you on Gnutella:)

That was really helpful, thanks. I'm actually not paranoid, my Dad is and he found out about it a while ago. I think I might just download it but keep it hidden and stuff because there's no way I can get sued so he'll never find out. Thanks panic fire and everyone else who replied.

Hobo, here's the link about Tuft's Univ students worried about downloading

http://www.tuftsdaily.com/vnews/disp.../43533ea06b14e

heavensdemon, your dad should read http://p2pnet.net/story/6629 for starts, and then see how www.eff.org can help.

Those of us who are parents should be involved in internet driver-training education. When our kids are at risk from multi-million dollar organizations, we need to get our governments to help. What makes it tough is that a lot of those millions are being used to lobby the representatives who should be looking out for us first.

You are still liable to a law suit, as you are breaching copyright and contributing to piracy by downloading copyrighted material, and knowing it's copyrighted, for free.

They do however seem to prefer to sue the big file sharers who make a lot of music available to be downloaded from their systems.

No-one is completely safe, and there's nothing you can do about it. It is however very unlikely that the people they act on will be you. You are one of hundreds of thousands, or maybe even millions who use file sharing networks to distrbute copyrighted material illegally.

Think again.

The people who have already been sued didn't have people come round their house to view their computers.
The government agencies or music agencies only need to ask your ISP (Internet Service Provider) for access logs from your account. These logs show records of every single packet you have sent through their system, and a copyrighted music file is very easy to spot.

(They may regularly, randomly ask your ISP for this info of people who they think have been doing so.)

If you cant handle the possible (but very unlikely) consequences, DONT DO IT!