Get yourself Peerguardian: http://peerguardian.methlabs.org/pg2.html (FREE) & it will stop those like the riaa, etc. from accessing your computer online.

The most music I downld is from artists who I already bought all their albums. But there's lots of live material & rare performances I can't buy of theirs & will never be officially released so ... a major motivation of myself.

IMO, So long as you don't advertise what you have & don't try to sell it ... then I believe you'd be reasonably safe. If you're downlding the latest movies, particularly those that might not have even been released on dvd yet then that might bring some attention. There's a lot of people world-wide who use p2p & not only using the gnutella network. The ria, etc try to make some examples of some fools who haven't been wise & this is made a big subject in the media ("we'll be back shortly with more news after this sponsored message by ...") But it's somewhat scare tactics.