IANAL > Is a few pieces of a copyrighted file still copyrighted? How many chunks do you need to have before you are actually infringing anything? Probably yes

IANAL > Is a few pieces of a copyrighted file still copyrighted? How many chunks do you need to have before you are actually infringing anything? Probably yes, by connecting to that particular swarm that is sharing "Piratesofthecarribean12.avi" you are showing intent to download that file. The onus would most likely be on you to persuade the court that you had some other reason for connecting. What possible reason could you have for downloading a few kb of a 1GB file other than to get the whole thing? Remember this is civil law , not criminal law so the burden of proof on the people suing you is somewhat lower. > What if it's encrypted? That the transfer was encrypted doesn't really mean much, the way these people would catch you is to join the swarm themselves and send pieces of the file to others. So essentially they are the ones doing the encrypting so will know what the data was before encryption. > How do you prove what a torrent says in its title is actually what it contains? I assume they will just connect to the swarm, download the file themselves to verify it's contents and then serve pieces of that out to others. So they will know exactly what is being transmitted. > How do you prove that a download was willful? Again, I imagine the onus would be on your to suggest another reason such as someone broke into your wifi etc. Whether you have absolute responsibility for what happens on your internet connection appears to be a grey area however. > What if individual files in an overall torrent are non infringing? I don't imagine it would matter, they would be more concerned with the parts that were infringing.