I think you may have been refering to the info given here:
http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/howto-notgetsued.php
Let me use an analogy. You go and buy a cd from 'cds r us' take it home, and play your cd. The cd has been purchased, and under the license you are allowed to play for home/personal use, and are allowed to make copies for your own use only. Secondly you see a film on tv, you tape with your VHS or DVD burner, but don't pay for it - now obviously one is illegal, and one isn't. The main reason because you have broken the agreement of the license, and the copyright law of the UK.
People have been taping films off the tv for years, and have not been taken to court - indeed I bet it one went into a majority of homes in the UK illegal copies of taped radio or films would be found. Basically file sharing is the same, if you share files (upload and download) you can be taken to court - indeed you could have been taken to court for taping from radio or the film off the tv. The problem for the record industry, is the scale of sharing, and how they are losing out financially. In addition your IP address is broadcast throughout the web, this is true of torrents also, you can be traced (after the authortities have attempted to get your personal info from the ISP). So in theory, yes you can be taken to court for one file, if you are breaking the license, and therefore copyright laws.
So if you don't want to get caught, don't break the law. There are licenses which allow you to share freely, one is called Creative commons:
http://creativecommons.org/
Here is my point, the government haven't taken any VHS or DVD recorder manufacturers to court, or think someone who taped last Thursday edition of Eastenders is **** of the Earth, but mention P2P...oh dear (wag finger) I hate the 'Holier than tho' attitude, I bet if you ask people they have never gone over the 30mph speed limit by 5mph (which according to gov ads can be the difference between life and death), but there you go (rant over
)
I use both P2P and bit torrent technologies, and think they are excellent. Where else could I get my Linux distros so quickly (and legally), and grab online books (Project Gutenberg), and creative commons music so easily and quickly ?!? There are many unsigned bands who use the networks too, which the record industry won't give a lookin. I just wish the price of dowloading was reduced, I mean 70 odd pence for 1 track is ridiculous, that's 7 quid for a 10 track cd - which with DRM you can only transport to so many machines, and is far inferior to cd quality (because mp3 is compressed), and you get no artwork/cd case - nothing physical. Anyway I digress....
Finally these make interesting reading:
http://www.betanews.com/article/P2P_...ion/1134249644
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaSentry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediadefender
Even though I share legitimate music, I can still be scanned by the above agencies (and there are probably more), so I use a little program called PeerGuardian2, which is free and uses the info from blocklist.org to block known IP from unwanted intrusion. Obviously it is not perfect, but it does help
