- and when you have a decent FW and AV, you can even visit warez and porn sites (SERIOUSLY! 
what would I do without them?!?!) You just have to pay a little bit attention. You don't let ANY site install ANYTHING.
Careful there. I've got realtime protection going on my computer, use the latest version of firefox, and generally don't do anything stupid, but I've still gotten really bad spyware infections from places like anonib. Don't ask me how. So I'm just saying, nothing is foolproof.
AV software and other such security is designed to stop any leaks a guy-who-knows-what-he's-doing might have. Something that sneaks by the radar. The only malware I've had so far was a flash tracking cookie. Which I easily removed with a Firefox extension. It's the only thing Spybot S&D ever detects. Not to mention the last time I heard the evil Avast! alarm was over a year ago. I just use NoScript, WOT, Flashblocker, Adblocker and BetterPrivacy. All Firefox extensions that work great. On top of that I got the Avast! Home edition and Spybot S&D. That's all the security I have. Plus my knowledge of course.
Of course, I don't download piracy. The only music I get is downloaded off Youtube. Which is basically legal. Since to play it on my computer, it has to download to my temporary folder. If it can do that, I can ask it to download elsewhere. Like my desktop. Where I can convert the FLV file to an MP3 file. Alternatively, just download a second copy and convert that to MP3. This is legal because I am not distributing them. If it can be hosted on Youtube, it can be legally downloaded.
But the main point, it is safer than using Limewire or whatever.
As for games and videos, I don't. Just don't. I buy my games and give my money to games that deserve them.
My point was just that, even with decent security programs, and even without doing anything remotely stupid, you can still get malware, and that it's happened to me. I don't know what filesharing has to do with any of what I said at all. Also, most music on youtube is not legal, sorry. Unless it's a case where it's actually been put up by the distribution company who owns it, it was almost definitely put up in violation of somebody's copyright, so your ethical high-horse argument is a little misapplied. For the most part, music in youtube videos is effectively pirated, and just nobody has sent youtube a cease-and-desist about it yet, or they just aren't bothering to.
*Ahem* That tracking cookie was there because I messed up. Not because I did everything perfectly. So my argument still hods.
About legality of Youtube, it's more of a loophole really. If Youtube doesn't get sued, it's "legal". My ethical high-horse is that it's not only "legal" but also SAFER than using outright illegal means.
What about tracking cookies? I wasn't even talking about your computer! I was talking about stuff that's theoretical possible and that has happened to me. I wasn't even talking about tracking cookies. Quite frankly, I have no idea what you're talking about. I was talking about how it's possible to get malware (
not tracking cookies) from websites even with decent realtime protection and without doing anything stupid whatsoever.
And no, copyright infringement is not "legal" simply because nobody's told you not to do it yet. That's a really naive assessment.
Copyright holders have to send cease-and-desist orders before suing a website, yes. That doesn't mean that what they're doing is actually legal, just that the copyright holders have to at least ask the site to remove the material before suing. It's like if the law said "if someone steals from you, ask for it back first, and if they don't give it back, THEN you can bug the police".
It wouldn't make theft legal, and the DCMA cease-and-desist policies don't make copyright infringement legal. That would be an extremely awful precedent, because it would boil down to "as long as nobody catches you, what you're doing is perfectly legal and you don't need to feel bad".
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Topic: Confusing Computer issue... (Read 7288 times)