Absolutely. The way that BitTorrent works is to break files into many small pieces, and to download them in parallel (not all at once, but many at once) from multiple locations. This works well because much home internet access is asynchronous, the download is much faster than the upload. By retrieving data from many people, the bottleneck of an individual's upload speed being small is reduced, because many slow connections make a fast connection. This also makes the system much more robust, in case any individual user goes offline.

So even if your power fails, or you lose access, people will still be able to download the files they are getting from you, they'll just hop over to other sources. To continue to contribute if you wish to (which is what makes it all work), just make sure you do not move the file (copy it all you like) or rename the file in your downloads location.
Source(s):
Experience with BitTorrent, various white papers and studies on its distribution model.

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yes. in fact you don't need to copy or move it. just use the file in situ.
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Yes, that is correct! As long as you don't delete the file (move it or rename it) everything's fine!
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