http://www.afterdawn.com/software/p2p_s ... ardian.cfm

anyone used it? vital software or paranoid rubbish?

I've heard of it. Not as good or handy as they make it seem. Basically what it does is take known IP addresses of people that want to sue you for copyright infringement and blocks them from connecting to you. That way, they can't see what files you're sharing (and, I assume, you can't connect to them to do downloads, either).

The thing is....how accurate is the list of IPs? The IP ranges being used are not going to be RIAA and MPAA owned. They'll be owned by smaller companies that do all the dirt work for the RIAA. How many companies are there? How many ISPs do they get IP addresses from, and how often do they change?

IMO, assuming there's no adware/spyware involved, it probably won't hurt you much. On the other hand, it may well give you a false sense of security.

tried it, and mcafee seems to be on the list of blocked ip address's , which is most useful when you can't update your anti virus definitions.

got rid of it.

Heard of it, never used it, this is why: as Satis points out, it uses lists that are not accurate. More importantly, it blocks ranges of IP adresses, you may filter out some RIAA like companies, but also other valuable sources.
And it eats CPU off course.