Downloading copyrighted material is illegal. Not that one is looking at criminal charges, but there is a chance of getting into a nasty lawsuit brought by the copyright owner. Recently, Verizon lost a case against the RIAA in which someone downloaded a bunch of stuff off of one of the P2P networks, the RIAA got his IP address and sued Verizon under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to compel them to release information on who had that IP address at that time. Verizon is appealing it right now. My best guess is that they'll lose. I don't think that the RIAA's success is really anything to worry about though, it's simply too expensive for them to go after everyone that downloads stuff. Also, as long as there is no suit pending against an "infringer" and his ISP, that ISP is free to erase any records they have about IP usage. Most likely, a fair number of ISPs will adopt a policy of destroying any records they have as soon as the user signs off. Just as a hypothetical--lets say someone downloads stuff, the copyright owner knows his IP address, asks the ISP to give them his name and they comply. No one is going to bust into your house and grab your computer. They'll probably send you a letter stating that you've snatched their copyrighted work and you've either got to pay for it or erase it. If they really get mad, they might file suit against you and start discovery--that means that there will be a court order that you must turn over the contents of your hard drive within a certain period or be in contempt. Also, when discovery starts, you'd be in contempt if you then try to erase anything. Of course, a good number of people/corporations under discovery still erase damning stuff and it would be awfully hard for the court to determine just when you overwrote a file with ones and zeros. I have to say, that under discovery you shouldn't erase anything, but it could be impossible to tell exactly when you tossed a burned CD out or erased a file.