I am a supporter of copyright laws, because I was trained as a librarian and I respected intellectual property rights. However, when it comes to the internet, and the price of software, I have been known to download an illegal copy of some software. After all, I’m no longer working so I can’t get hold of these bits of software and don’t have the money to spend on them.

I haven’t had call to download illegal music. I just copy from my own CDs to my MP3 player. Certainly others with access to this computer have done so however.

I do download movies but don’t consider them copyright infringements because mostly they are TV series and I just want to see them before they are available to me on free TV in Australia.

My main problem with these bittorrent sites now is that I have managed to pick up some malware along the line which appeared to set in motion uploads and downloads from one of those sites. Hence my broadband allocation was used. My computer security software did not pick this up. I found it by downloading malwarebytes anti-malware program. I recommend this software. Some of the advertised malware removal bits of software are malware in themselves.

There is a reason to avoid downloading from file sharing sites now though. There is a Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the US and in Australia it is called Copyright Amendment (Digital Agenda) Act.

What will this mean?

You can be identified and you can lose your broadband connection and you could face prosecution. In Australia there is going to be testing of peer to peer technology.