Well, what is jacked up is I encrypt all out going traffic from my network, and things like folding at home or SENA or whatever it is called send packets out all the time which are also encrypted.
So, on what grounds do these organizations have to view your traffic and off what base can they subpoena your ISP for logs of what you are doing?
Look, if you are going to use something buy it, seriously go out and buy it. If you pirate it, you are hurting the industry you are trying to support. I know that you aren't really supporting the developers or artists as much as the big evil corporate publishers and record labels, but they front the money for that stuff. I think their business models are old and jacked up but that is a whole different subject all together.
However, on what grounds should they be allowed to search and based on what? When does it violate your 4th amendment right (if you are a US citizen)?
Let me give you a hypothetical here:
Let's say I am running uTorrent and I am seeding say 5 Linux distros while I am at work. My upload bandwidth is maxed, plus I am upload folding at home as well. All legit and completely legal uses of torrents. However, being the person that I am, outgoing traffic is encrypted in any application that uses the net. This is because I don't want any personal information of mine floating around. You think email is safe? You email someone important information and it has to pass through a lot of servers and routers to get to it's final destination. There are plenty of ways someone can look at something which is why I only use webmail that supports HTTPS.
So, they are now looking at my bandwidth usage and they see huge spikes of uploading. They are like this guy is sharing something so they subpoena me because the large companies hired a big bully organization backed with lots of money to scare them into playing nice. So they show up and say hey, we are here to inspect your computer. They find the 5 Linux torrents and folding at home and I explain to them that is legit, actually, wait, lets back up.
They show up at my home and I first slam the door int heir faces and say get a warrant fascist pigs, I know my rights. Then I go over and crypt my hard drive just to screw with them and my password will be the lyrics to a song I like, so like 150+ characters easily counting spaces of course.
At what point does a judge give warrant and at what point am I giving up my personal freedoms and rights for a piece of software that I may or may not have? Is busting me for the few illegal songs I downloaded going to stop it? No, is it going to say I don't support music? Ha, never, I will gladly point the jury to photos of my vinyl record collection.
What I would be worried about most is your personal rights and your privacy and not about whether is amoral to download a movie or an album.