I seem to be experiencing all the problems mentioned above, frustratingly, but want also to mention a time my Limewire (osx) just quoted me for downloading a 350 meg file: 39,000+ days, which I think is about 107 years.

All of these technical solutions are put forward above, but I think it's selfish newbies not turning on partial (or any) sharing. Fair enough with MP3s in the UK (BPI legal team recently picked a very few (20) people in UK, to make an example of on basis of number of illicit MP3 files they permitted for sharing), but for BBC TV shows which we paid for already?