[johnfn]

This argument doesn't apply. The things that you listed all have legitimate, non lawbreaking uses. For instance, security books can help you keep your computer more secure, lockpicks can help you understand your house security, and so on.

A torrent containing a link to a file that is illegal to copy has no legitimate non lawbreaking use case. There is no legal way to use a torrent of Portal. I notice you mentioned in a separate comment that some items, like grenades, can only be used in illegal ways. This is true also of torrents that the Pirate Bay hosts.

Yes, it is true that legal torrents exist; however, the Pirate Bay distinguishes itself as having both legal and illegal torrents. That's what the difference is.

[tsally]

As you say, legal torrents exist (indeed, many open source projects rely on torrents because they can't afford the bandwidth costs of direct download). Therefore, a torrent tracker has both legitimate and illegitimate uses. Similarly, I can find legal and illegal content via a Google search.

There isn't any ambiguity here. Torrents and web search are both multi-use technologies. In the case of multi-use technologies, we should prosecute the criminals based on their use of the technology in question.

[SoftwareMaven]

I have downloaded many copyrighted works that I own physical media for as a convenience, since ripping them can be such a pain and kids are hard on little plastic discs. Courts have held that this copy is a legal copy.

To say there is no legitimate non-lawbreaking use is incorrect.

[eru]

Yes, but I guess when you use Bittorrent for this purpos, you have to make sure that you are not sharing your legal copy with other people, who may not have purchased the work.

[SoftwareMaven]

It is not my job to police them. Given I am utilizing the BT ecosystem to receive the copy, I share in return as payment. I do not share movies forever, but that is really just to keep my bandwidth from being saturated. If I just leach, then I won't have an opportunity in the future to have this convenience.

Would I prefer that they not pirate the stuff I download? Yes, I would. Content creators absolutely deserve to be paid for their efforts.

If content publishers would give me the convenience of a non-DRM infected digital copy (or the ability to easily rip a disc), I would not ever need to use BT. The digital copies of disks some publishers provide is close, but not good enough.

[eru]

I was talking about the legal situation. Downloading of stuff you own may be legal. Sharing (even while you download) is not legal, if the license does not permit it.