And, from this discussion, it appears that it may have been the site operator's plan all along to collect the "defense fund" for a plea bargain and sell out his subscribers (all conveniently identifiable by login information; no idea whether credit card information is included, though if donors' card/PayPal information can be connected to accounts, it could be nasty).
The thing about BitTorrent is that while you download, you typically upload twice as much to more recent leechers, which puts you in a grey area. And highly-paid lawyers thrive in grey areas.
Well no, that really depends on the way you adjust your client, and also on one's bw. Most dsl deals in OZ suck hard and offer 512/128 for high cost. And in fact on most monitored sites, RATIO is everyone's gripe, because too many ppl want to get away with less than 1:1. Don't know how many forums threads I've read on this now. True, when ul bw will start to match dl bw we see lge amounts uploaded, too.
Yeah we'll see. Most countries still haven't criminalised leechers, but try to prosecute the uploaders where they can. What every leech can expect is a torrent (haha) of MPAA email spam to them, warning them, issuing phone notices etc. check out this for laughs though. It's Pirate Bay's response to "legal threats" http://www.piratebay.org/frame.html