Protests are only good if they’re annoying. They’re meant to be annoying. They’re meant to make other people notice, to stop traffic, to cause delays and ideally an economic hit to the city. If nobody felt the protest, how do you expect it to have an effect?
Probably years, if not more. XKCD’s “What If?” has a nice explanation on a similar question, but in that case it was a portal at the bottom of the mariana trench and the question was about draining the oceans. The answer is that you probably wouldn’t notice in all your lifetime.
If you torrent media, you should keep it at least until you have a positive ratio. Torrenting is a group effort, and every time someone has a negative ratio, someone else needs to overcompensate for it. If you don’t keep your ratios, you’re also making the torrent die, which is bad for media preservation.
Can you elaborate a bit more? I don’t seem to understand what you mean.