I agree Catsix, I wasn’t trying to villefy IP blockers, because I know there are a lot of uses for them for Net Admins and such, and private individuals who are perfectly legal stuff. I, personally, use all kinds of things that are worse than that(In terms of what most use them for.) on my PC as a hobby. Basically what I was saying was that while IP blockers might well be a good topic for discussion, file sharing utilities probably aren’t.
I am a computer tech as well and I have known people who use Kazaa or Bear Share to share files between themselves that are not copyrighted. For instance, a person where I was working asked me how to best send her sister across the country a pile of photos and videos she had on her computer (all personal stuff she took with her own cameras…or so she told me). I first suggested she burn the files to a CD and mail that but she did not have a CD burner and did not want to have to buy one if she could avoid it. I briefly started to mention setting up an FTP connection but her eyes immediately glazed over and I could see I had lost her. I then asked if she and her sister had and used something like Kazaa or Bear Share and she said yes. There ya go…send the files via Kazaa. At a later date she came by and said that method worked.
I’m not trying to pretend that Kazaa isn’t used for sharing copyrighted material or even that legitimate use makes up for a significant amount of what Kazaa is used for. Just relaying an instance I know of where it was used legally.
That’s pretty cool, Whack. I’d never actually heard of anyone using it legit. I mean, I figured someone was using it for a legitimate purpose. 
I understand completely. The first post I had in this thread was kind of a joke about how things would be if taken to the absolute extreme. I mentioned the rest of it because the technology itself, IP blocking, port translation, etc is really interesting to me. I bore the hell out of my family on a regular basis, I’m afraid. It wasn’t to disagree with you about the interest in not discussing file sharing here, just a takeoff on your statement that there are some legitimate uses to damn near any type of technology.
Don’t get me started on packet sniffing. 
Here’s another legitimate use of P2P (Napster, actually), one that wouldn’t have worked if the service weren’t already chock full of copyrighted material:
I must strongly disagree. The phone company does nothing to police use of their lines - does that mean they condone drug dealing and terrorism? Absolutely not; it means they’re a common carrier. They’ve deliberately chosen not to interfere with the content to protect themselves.
If Kazaa chose to police some content (which would mean reworking their software from the ground up), they’d become responsible for policing all content. They’d have to delete copyrighted material that’s illegal here, Nazi related material that’s illegal in Germany or France, Falun Gong material that’s illegal in China, and who knows what else that’s illegal in Batshitzania.
I’m a musician and I use my mp3s in the manner Mr2001 described. I haven’t struck gold yet though.
Keep your fingers crossed.
These services do have legal uses.
You are aware, mods, that the RIAA is blocking access to those who would other wise never have access.
If I didn’t listen to Taylor Mali ‘Objection Overruled’ online, I would probably never think of the viability of slam poetry.
The admins also don’t want people to use IP blockers against this board.
Does that mean we can’t discuss the many web anonymizer services?
Here’s an example: Masking IP adresses forbidden?