Interesting discussion.
Glad that I live in Amsterdam. The Dutch Copyright Act of 1912 (insert satanic laughter) makes things much easier:
BREIN (the Dutch RIAA) was not amused. They went to court and bit the dust. Technodesign vs. BREIN:
http://www.solv.nl/Rechtspraak-6.pagina?nid=5&lang=en .
Downloading music, movies, dirty pictures, and eBooks for personal use is legal even if the source is not. Russian sites, P2P networks, anything goes. As long as you only download (not upload) you can legally keep the bits and bytes flowing in.