Windows 7: Legal to torrent?

Hi everyone,

Is it illegal to DL the 7 betas? Ive gotten several of them... BUT.



Our internet got shut off because my roommate downloaded Rosetta Stone

We had to promise not to DL anything illegal again... and I dont want to risk anything.

So can anything happen?

Thanks!

It wouldn't be wise to attempt it if you are in a college dorm; especially if it is from a torrent site.

Im off campus- but our cable company still caught his Rosetta Stone. Guess they got a letter from someone.

I wish Ipredator would be live already...


And campus is where ive gotten all the other ones. I dont think they can track some random laptop on their giant open network...

Torrents are like Driving a car or owning a Gun (where legal).

It's not Using them per se - it's what you DO with them.
Shooting people or driving dangerously would be illegal (at least in most countries - although if you came here you really wonder how we don't become the "accident capital of the planet". Woe betide you if you get in the way of a large 4 x 4 hurtling down a tiny dirt track at over 110 KPH. ).

Downloading any copyright material without consent of the owner is ILLEGAL. (Still on this board a load of us - probably the majority have D/L various builds of Windows 7 -- but as far as P2P is concerned this is a relatively minor infraction -- people are usually more concerned with Music and Film downloads and some high cost software like Photoshop CS4 rather than a Free Limited life product like Windows 7 (beta or any subsequent evaluation / test build).

Downloading stuff like SUSE Linux from Novell where Novell actually encourages the use of the Torrent mechanism is 100% legal and fine.

Now you might have other constraints in that your access to the Internet is granted only that you DON'T use P2P sites (not sure how enforceable that would be in a Court of Law) or exceed your download limit (if you have one).

There could be other restrictions such as you aren't allowed to use the Internet in such a way that it severely degrades the service to other users.

So using Torrents is certainly NOT illegal -- but your activities Could be.

Cheers
jimbo

Your ISP does not care what you download they only act if forced by copyright holders, and MS is not about to complain to them for downloading windows 7(until it's finished).

Thats what I was thinking. I dont think MS cares at this point.

Is my ISP suspicious of me now? haha hope not.. :-)

Yes your quite right. Your isp does not give a damn unless forced to act upon it by these gangster like organisations who want to nothing more than a total monopoly on these products.

just how do they know you are downloading somethng illegally through torrent, because technically you are connecting to other computers, so how does ISP know what file you are downloading....torrents grabs bits and pieces and then combine them at the end.

The copyright holder is in the swarm collecting every IP that connects to it.

so we just need to bann all the big companies IPs