download clients

i'm guessing this is the best place to post this question on 4chan) is there any such thing as safe downloads?

i read that using Fastrack will increase ur % of getting busted (like Kazaa)

so what about torrents? or Gnutella clients? like bearshare and limewire? (emule is emule part of gnutella? where do emule and edonkey go?) and i'm using IRC is still safe as they get?

It depends on how popular is your network, and what you download.
Music, software and movies from your own country are the most dangerous downloads, but things like fansubbed unlicensed anime are as safe as it gets.

Torrents are targetted, but often the trackers then the releasers are given priority more than the sharers.

If you want to minimize the risks:
 - Use PeerGuardian, it is a software that block IPs of people who have no business knowing which copyright you try to infringe on. You'll need to find a list of IP addresses, I bet it is easy to find or maybe even provided with PG.
 - Use Usenet. Your ISP may have a shitty Usenet policy, so you may have to buy your way in, and there are a lot of scammers.
 - Theoretically, you could use a network like Freenet which is very secure, but I'd bet all you would find there are copies of the GNU manifesto, the Anarchist cookbook, and CP.