chance of geting busted for torrents?

so ive been browsing Google news randomly out of boredom and i found a few articles mentioning hundreds of ppl getting arrested for using bitrorrent clients like utorrent [wich i always keep running], so. my question is what are the chances of getting busted for it?

Lets just say its not high on the FBI's to do list.

I'd say those who get caught are downloading a lot of stuff, either that or they are unlucky. But think of it this way, only a few hundred were caught out of how many million people who torrent stuff. I'd say don't worry about it.

And those caught probably where peddling kiddy pron, or other highly illegal stuff.

0% if you're in a country that doesn't have "rules" about interent.

if you live in a country which has "rules" without using proxy pre-caution and all the other stuff, you'll get caught if you're VERY lucky, and when the government has nothing to do.

Basically what Kaimax wrote.

I don't think this belongs in Serious Discussion. It's more of a "once this question is answered the discussion is moot" thread.

In any case, most of the legwork for finding copyright infringers is done by third-party agencies who then contact the big corporate entity responsible for maintaining ownership of the copyright. They then send a Cease & Desist to whoever owns the IP that the copyright infringement was detected under, likely your Internet Service Provider. Your ISP will likely then forward the C&D to you, as sort of a, "Stop that, we don't want to keep receiving C&D's." (At this point you probably still don't have to worry about being sued, as your ISP will probably not release your IP that freely, so long as you don't continue to receive warnings.)

Now, there are three optimal ways to prevent yourself from even being detected to begin. There is also a fourth, less-optimal-but-still-pretty-good way, which is what most people practice. (I hope.)
1.) Stop pirating.
2.) Use a private tracker.
3.) Pay for a download service such as Rapidshare.
4.) Don't download popular movies, music, or games; especially when they've been just released. These are the items that tend to be under scrutiny. Also, as Kaimax suggested, utilizing a proxy when downloading from a public tracker is also a good idea.

Chances are extremely slim. It depends a great deal on what you are pirating. Suffice it to say, the US government really doesn't care about pirating anime. The only time they'll become involved is when the the anime has a licensor here in the United States, and at that only VIZ is really ever actively sending out C&D letters to fansubbers.

That isn't to say it isn't illegal anyway. A lot of people are under the fool notion that it is perfectly legal to download fansubbed anime as long as it isn't licensed in your country. Not true. The Japanese government could come after you, but they won't. Too much time and effort to go through your country's legal system just to get at a share of pirates.

As for pirating other material, I couldn't really tell you. I've only ever pirated anime or really old PC games.

So what everyone is saying is that chances are slims at best.

so, based on ^this, my chance of getting busted is nearly zero.

The chance of you getting caught in slim to none.

The majority of material out there is never watched for copyright violation. The stuff that is will only be for a limited time. You'd have to have tons and tons of people to keep track of everything and eventually they honestly don't care as much. That's why you should always check comments to see if someone got a C&D and which ISP they're with. You can also encrypt your shit while downloading, it's troublesome to start but it's worth it.

unless your doing seriously huge amounts of very illegal stuff all the time i seriously doubt they will care what you do. but if they do then download all you can before they get to you

the only time you really have to worry is if your on a college server, the college will be looking for everything.

Nearly zero, I never got busted and my ISP had the torrent access blocked. My country they doesn't really care about piracy, there's a hellova lot of piracy in there.

Depends on your country's cyber law, things that you downloaded using torrent and the quality of law enforcer, at the country i'm staying now, it's zero chance to get busted

Yeah, and I totally love it now..at least for now... at least... >_>

So long as the content you download don't have any content that appears in the FBI's data base you are good...then again Amazon recommended the dvd for the story of little Monica...nvm DOWNLOAD EVERYTHING SUFFER NO CONSEQUENCES!

Wat.

Why was this bumped? :/