There's a lot of game demos, videos, maps, mods etc that would be perfect for a torrent network to keep track of. Not to mention free music and whatever other stuff there might be... What alternatives are there? Any at all?
IIRC there was a court case in the US that excluded TV show recordings by classing them as timeshifting. It covered the case where a friend lends you a tape of a show he recorded (even if he puts it into the mail for you).
However with the current US legislation that the movie/TV companies are trying to push through, they are trying to slip timeshifting in under the radar on the back of that proposed legislation, hence things like the broadcast flag.