yet, Jam, you make the exact same argument for the legality of private gun ownership.
I don't know that it's really the intent. What is it largely being used for? Without looking up numbers, I'm willing to bet that over 75% of P2P file sharing is illegal file sharing. In fact, I believe that closer to 95% of p2p file sharing is illegal.
That makes a significant cost in revenue for the owners of copyright, no matter how you slice it (that takes into account the number of people who ONLY acquire it because it's free and would never touch it if it cost them anything).
A bittorrent server that hosts Linux distros, however, is hardly doing anything remotely illegal.
As much as I hate it, I have to side with the courts on this one. If 95% of the use for something is for illegal purposes, it should be shut down, or at least much better regulated.
Think about this, "Information wants to be free" lovers. If no one could make a living on producing intellectual property, the number of people who would spend most of their life working on intellectual property would not be able to do that. This means your music, your books, your comics, your movies, and even much of your software is gone. These people are trying to make a living giving you entertainment and service, and all you can do is complain when they insist that they want to be paid for it.
Now, I'm sure to be misinterpretted. Groups like the RIAA go after the PRINCIPLE of file sharing. WHich is retarded, in my opinion. THere are a vast number of legitimate reasons for efficient file sharing methods to be out there. But just letting anyone share anything at all isn't working. Instead of complaining about the people trying to protect their livlihood, perhaps you should support people who are trying to improve distribution methods to allow legitimate uses without making it so easy that most of the distribution going on is illegal.