I would like to see some cases quoted here. It's been my long time understanding that bittorrent services come under fire precisely because of their distribution model. Catching users in the act of uploading copyrighted content is the signal to press charges. I was under the impression that even the honeypot torrents were seeking actively sharing IPs for this reason, and would ignore users with uploads disabled because they wouldn't have as strong of a court case. Maybe I'm wrong! I have not actually studied the cases.

I'm not a lawyer and I wouldn't bet on how the court case would go, considering that the MPAA will hire very expensive lawyers and you probably will not. Most likely, it won't get that far and you'll settle out of court to avoid the court costs, so you'll pay regardless of whether it was actually illegal.

However, yes, my understanding of copyright law is that it only limits those who currently own a copy from making and distributing more. The relevant US Law is actually very short, take a look at Section 106: https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#106

(Edit: 106 lists what it is against the law to do, as you can see from 501 which talks about punishment etc. https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html )

Like everyone who ever got sued was for distribution and not downloads.

> Most of the lawsuits however have sued over DOWNLOADING and uploading, not just uploading or "distributing"

I'd like to know more about these lawsuits.

Can you cite a (US) case where someone was sued for just downloading where no distribution of any kind occurred?