The set of targeted works is pretty small, from what I hear. My understanding is that as long as you stay away from gay porn and recently released movies, your risk of litigation is negligible.

It depends how bad the enforcement tools are. They may make no distinction between uploading and downloading, just output a list of IP addresses that are part of the swarm.

Don't they treat seeding the same as uploading?

By uploading I also mean seeding

Aren't they technically the same thing? Either way, you're uploading bits to someone else, right?

Wouldn't making the initial files available be slightly worse then uploading partial bits?

Sure, but in the eyes of the law, you're still guilty.

To pick a random horseman of the infocalypse to draw an analogy from, importing drugs into the country is arguably worse than selling them on the street corner, but both are illegal.

I didn't even realize you could do this. Won't the swarm stop talking to you if you don't share?

No, they'll just send you less data. See BitTyrant for a detailed examination.