Law in Germany:
Fair use (Privatkopie) allows each person to make up to 7 copies of movies or music they own. The copies may only be given to persons you share a special bond with (not your whole school class for example). They also may copy their copy (7 times). You may record songs from the radio, or get the CDs from a library and still make your seven copies. In germany there is a special tax on CD/DVDs and the corresponding burners to compensate the copyright owners for these copies. This fair use is not applicable to software where you are allowed to make only one copy which has to stay with the original. Child pornography, instructions how to buid explosives and radical political documents are strictly forbidden.

You are allowed to download from a public portal where the offer isn't an obvious copyright infringement. Obvious would be a movy still in theatres for example. You aren't allowed to upload anything to a public portal you don't own the copyright and the copyright owner did'nt allow it.

Still afaik there have been no problems for OCH Downloaders and maybe 5 times an OCH uploader has been fined. Mass targets have been Kazaa, Limewire, edonkey and bitorrent users, but mostly sharers of single chart songs, german pornography and top 10 PC games.