The legal battles plaguing the LimeWire P2P service finally took their toll Tuesday when Lime Wire announced that it has blocked the LimeWire service from the Gnutella peer-to-peer network.

Lime Wire was orderd by the court to disable the searching,downloading, uploading, file trading and/or file distributionfunctionality, and/or all functionality of LimeWire's P2P file-sharingsoftware. Visitors to the site are now met with a legal notice thatnotifies them of the shutdown.

The move has left many users in search of an alternative to LimeWire.What other P2P sites are available? While there are countless optionsavailable, we polled the PCMag staff and put together a list of severalalternatives for BitTorrent, Gnutella, and beyond. All of these servicesshould be used for legal downloads, of course; PCMag does not condonethe download of copyrighted or illegal material. With that in mind, hereare few sites that might help with the LimeWire withdrawal.


FrostWire

Ever since Lime Wire made its Tuesday announcement, the name FrostWirehas been floating around the Web as a viable alternative. FrostWire,which touts itself as "open source and completely free," is a P2Pfile-sharing program for BitTorrent and Gnutella. It dates back to 2004,and version 4.21.1 is available now for download on frostwire.com. Theinterface looks a lot like LimeWire; a YouTube user posted an instructional video detailing how to get set up. On Tuesday, the company also released an Android app for $4.99, though based on a PCMag hands on with the app, it leaves a little something to be desired.


Vuze

Vuze, formerly known as Azureus, bills itself as the "most powerful BitTorrent app on earth." Earlier this month, it rolled out supportfor the new Apple TV, BlackBerry devices, and a wider range of Androiddevices in addition to existing support for various game consoles, TiVo,and Samsung TVs. A paid option, Vuze Plus, offers unlimited DVD burnsand built-in antivirus for $24.99 per year. Version 4.5 is available fordownload now.PCMag reviewed version 4.2about a year ago, and found it to be good choice for novices that maynot want to learn file-sharing-related terminology before gettingstarted.


uTorrent

uTorrent is a small BitTorrent client that bills itself as "a powerhousewith a tiny appetite"; the latest Windows version is just 320KB. PCMag reviewed version 1.8.4 in October 2009 and found it to be a basic, effective client. Since then, uTorrent has added an alpha Linux download and a stable version for Mac. Last month, uTorrent also unveileda the Featured Artist program, which offers musicians and filmmakersthe ability to submit their work for consideration in specialpromotions.


Shareaza

Shareaza is a P2P client for Windows available for download atshareaza.sourceforge.net. You can upload/download from EDonkey2000,Gnutella, BitTorrent, and Gnutella2, Shareaza said. As PCMag outlined two years ago,it's not the same as Shareaza.com, a copycat site that tries to trickyou into downloading software you don't want. The real Shareaza releasedversion 2.5.3.0 in June 2010, while Shareaza.com is currently promotingversion 7. PCMag hasn't reviewed Shareaza since 2004, but at the time it earned a 4 out of 5 rating.


Ares

Ares is another sourceforge.net file-sharing site. An updated version -Ares 2.1.7 - was just released on Wednesday, which supports theBitTorrent protocol and Shoutcast radio stations via the built-inaudio/video player, Ares said.


RapidShare

RapidShare is not a P2P site, but it lets you upload files and then senda download link to people with whom you want to share the file. Usersof the free service can upload files up to 500MB, though there is a15-minute wait time between downloads. A RapidPro service, which runsabout $8 per month, will give you 50GB of storage, 2GB uploads, and nowait times. The only drawback to RapidShare is that you can't searchdirectly for files stored on the service, though numerous RapidSharesearch sites are in existence. Source: PCmag