From wikipedia Sharing by each peer therefore begins when the first complete segment is downloaded and can begin to be uploaded if another peer requests it. There appears to be a thin line between being a downloader and being an uploader.
They are looking for the "root" uploaders as in the ones that rip the movie to divx or the song to mp3 and then actually create and seed the original... in all P2P formats you upload and download. Since BitTorrent is so wide-spread and uncentralized it is going to be extremely difficult to stop especially considering there are hundreds of different clients and host websites... all they can really do is shut down the .torrent file sites but when they close one, 20 open.
Quality all depends on one thing, well two really... the quality of the original product (ie cd or recording) and then the conversion rate of the file. Generally speaking you can't tell the difference between an .ogg and .mp3 sound-wise, although most say .ogg are higher quality because the file compression is better... meaning you can get a higher bit rate while utilizing the same or smaller overall file size. For instance if you have an MP3 burned at 128kbps (FM quality) it is usually about 1 meg for each one minute of audio... however you can burn a song to OGG at a higher kbps 196kbps for example and still be smaller then a 128kbps MP3.
What I meant was the "initial uploader". The person that rips/encodes the content in the first place and spreads it to the masses. Those are the guys that will get hit by lawsuits first. Of course anybody that puts themselves out there and downloads or uploads are putting themselves at risk. The RIAA can very well decide to target random individuals just to put some fear into the community.
been using it for almost the entire time I have been creating and distibuting videos, adn it has never messed up anything other than my bandwidth.
