The problem you are having is too many people out there that are firewalled (including yourself adding to the problem).
You have to learn a little bit before you go jumping into file sharing.
You have to learn how to port forward through your firewall. It's not rocket science.
If everyone is firewalled (and most people are now because of cable modem routers) then no one will be able to connect to anyone else.
There are less and less people with high speed connections and open ports, you all need to spread the word before this gets worse.
That's why you can't connect, as soon as you open a port everyone will come to you instead and you will be able to get all the files because "push" will work for you now.