said by Ryan :

Heres the deal right now even if a copyright group found you downloading something they cant touch you. Every lawsuit is related to SHARING not downloading. Also its illegal for them to sniff packets like that so it wouldnt hold up in court. ISP technically is not supposed to monitor your connection either (as of now) and really they wouldnt want to implement the resources to do so especially where their not even held liable for what you download.

Yes I suppose they might be able to see what your downloading if they put the resources into monitoring your connection like that, but they cant really do anything about it. Also I am sure you have visited a website containing copyrighted material or warez. Even a site like rapidshare is essentially no different then downloading from a nonssl newsgroup connection. SSL is just overkill right now unless like I said your isp is slowing your connection. Beleive me you will hear about it if any of these things change. It would hit every news site and tech site including the front page here at dslr. I cant predict the future, but we will know long in advance if we would need to start using ssl connections.