I am fairly new to the pc scene.I recently got involved in the world of file sharing because it seems like everyone is doing it.Why is it almost stadard to have a dvd burner included on new pc,s.Why can you go to best buy and walk down isles of dvdr,cdr and burners you cant tell me they are for transfering cam video to look at all the programs for dvd burning or copying.Log on to aserues and there is like seven hundred thousand people on.With all this going on around you it feels legal.I am not trying to rationalise but hell it seems like the computer industry is leading the way.

I hate to have tell you this but many people (most of them in the commercial world in fact) actually use their cd/dvd writers for legitimate and lawful purposes (e.g. weekly back-up of their data files, debtors' ledgers, etc).

Newsflash! Companies try to make a buck!

There is also a premium paid on media and hardware, including printers, as insurance for the industry that looses out to the "piracy" game. I know a number of people who download only what they own as they can't get their heads round actually ripping or copying games and dvds themselves. They have read everything and still just can't do it, there is some sort of block there. Much like me with image editing tools I can't get my head around photoshop.

In some countries backing up of things you own is either expressly legal or even where it is not it may be passively allowed as long as it is for personal use only as it would be impossible to enforce the law. Also as phil has said their are plenty of other legal uses for it too.

Where the p-2-p software is concerned that is not the industry as such just people outside on it. Some programmers sites do tell you that they don't approve of the sue of their software for illegal purposes and if you do so it is on your own back.