i'm not here to rub this in anybody's face, God knows i've been sweatin' over this and even lost some sleep. in the end however, after a direct telephone converstation with a suse.de rep, i was told that he doesn't believe my torrent is illegal, just unfortunate since he's afraid it will cost suse sales. i can see two sides to that argument -- is it loss of sales because i'm giving it away to so many or an increase in sales because those that get familiar with suse are more likely to buy it later? we could probably debate that for the rest of our lives and never come to an agreement -- but the issue at hand is whether or not it's illegal and the opinion that matters, suse's, tells me it's not. there has been some discussion that it's the timing of my torrent that's in question -- i just double-checked forum postings and my web site file dates and my torrent went live the 10th of april, US Central, which was well AFTER people had started reporting having received their packages in other parts of the world. after very little digging at all, for example, i found this posting on the german list -- http://lists.suse.com/archive/suse-linux/2005-Apr/0513.html . far as i know it's not illegal for someone like this to then freely share it with people in other countries. since my torrent went live after these reports there's absolutely nothing whatsoever to substantively suggest that mine are dubious in origin. i'm sorry some of you feel such disdain for me -- and that's your perogative. i'm an enthusiast, not a terrorist or punk hacker, who was and is excited about any release of my favorite linux. i just received email notifcation that my boxed set has shipped. i'm looking forward to comparing the torrent iso content with my own cds so i can verify them and act, or not, as appropriate. no hard feelings, i hope we can put this to rest now, thanks.