For the life of me, I don't know why the industry is so worried about filesharing. It's got a lot of drawbacks:
1) It's slow and inconvenient, often taking days to download one movie. And running filesharing software, such as Kazaa or Limewire, really slows a network.
2) The quality is inconsistent and often poor, whether it's music or movies.
3) Downloads are rife with rogue viruses and spyware. When I needed a demo of an infected computer, I simply downloaded 4 porn movies and ran them. Two of the movies thoroughly infected my demo machine.
But I find filesharing, particularly torrents, to be wonderful for getting my hands on documentaries, especially foriegn ones, and other educational material. The movie industry is simply on a witchhunt and failing to adapt themselves to the new technologies out there.
http://www.alternet.org/story/18698/
At least some countries, notably France and Australia, have the good sense to begin to legalize filesharing (at least they're talking about it). Filesharing has no place at work though. It's an admin's nightmare, creating not only legal issues but also tons of network issues.
I'd only run anything torrents, and I'd download judiciously. Don't count on quality. Watch your back, you're liable to download viruses and spyware at some point. Torrents, though not anonymous, will give you more anonymity than other forms of filesharing.
As for the legality of filesharing, I'm with Thoreau: "Break the law."
