Is torrent and limewire illegal for me?

I just use torrent to share my files with friends and sometime I download files like Cartoons, really old like One Piece Anime, episode 40-50, can't find them online, so I downloaded them.
I download Naruto, Bleach and others but I never ever uploaded to any other websites or put them in CD. Once I downloaded the movie Clover Field. But, I was the only one saw it and deleted it. Is there any chance that Govt. will find me via my ISP that I have downloaded illegal files? How about limewire, in my neighbor hood, every friends of mine download music/videos. Millions and millions of people use it, so I am using it too. Am I doing wrong? Can I download movies, not to sell them or to put them on DVDs just for my personal entertainment?. I know that they deserve money, but they earned much they needed by the movie theaters. Same goes for the singers!

Judging from the ads regarding piracy, you are worse than a carjacker or a man who mugs little old ladies and you are sure to get caught and spend eternity in prison pondering how you stole from some director who was merely trying to earn an honest living by stealing a movie idea from someone else and making a bad remake.

They lack the resources to go after people who are downloading for personal use. They are busy going after people who are selling pirated movies for profit. I think they vae about 10 million other people to arrest before they bust down your door for downloading last week's episode of House, M.D.

It is definitely illegal for ANYONE. However, when government or whoever investigates these matters try and track down people, they target the people who set up the servers. They wouldnt target an individual who is downloading the file because it wouldnt be too effective that way AND its just a waste of time. So what they do is try and track down the people who organise and set up these programs such as limewire and bring the whole program down altogether rather than catch a single individual.

There are waaaay too many illegal downloads going on for you to worry.


I think the government primarily leaves it up to the companies with the copyrights to the music or films to press charges.

You probably won't get caught.

But it is illegal.

It is considered illegal because you copy the material and distribute it with out consent. Once you start downloading someone else uploads from you on the same file. The movie company would rather you pay and will not see it as simply as you may like to put it. The company is a business and as long as their in it for money, there is a law/ contract that you to pay for the DVD. If you don't then you broke that law and so on. The only thing you can do is not keep all the files in the folder you download to. Once before, they sued some people who had 1000s of Cd's on the computer sharing. If a small label finds you sharing more of their newly released Cd's than they've sold, they might sue. Whether or not is another story. It's harder for them to track the torrents.........maybe