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Resurrecting a dead torrent tracker and finding 3M peers

kianbradley.com

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Re: Resurrecting a dead torrent tracker and finding 3M peers

#11

Post by jedberg »

hungryhobbit wrote: post #9
jedberg wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think the police understand this nuance? Especially since most of the traffic that will go through there is probably copyright infringement? They'll just see tracker and assume it's illegal.

Do you think the police are actually policing the internet? Even if you didn't mean your local police, and meant a national body like the FBI, the truth is they focus on other crimes (eg. child abuse), and even then they are woefully unable to handle even most of those crimes. The vast, vast majority of copyright enforcement comes from copyright holders ... not the internet copyright police.

Of course not. But first a copyright holder tells the police, and then the police enforce it.

The police rarely find crimes on their own -- they are almost always acting on a request from someone else.

Re: Resurrecting a dead torrent tracker and finding 3M peers

#12

Post by zht »

fine_tune wrote: post #7

You bought a house that had a murder X years ago and are wondering if your guilty for the murder, probably not - aslong as you don't do more murder in it. I suppose real life is more interesting though, the guy who picked up the domain to stop the global ransomware crisis was picked up after Defcon if memory serves. Ironically your probably at more risk from the GDPR for leaking those IP addresses that connected to t…

I think it's more like you buy an abandoned house where people used to go buy drugs

you buy the house and people are still coming knocking on your door asking you if you have any drugs to sell

you're not doing anything wrong, but if the police notice people constantly coming to your house to buy drugs they may do something about it

Re: Resurrecting a dead torrent tracker and finding 3M peers

#14

Post by gpm »

diggan wrote: post #2

> Is this legal? Why wouldn't it be? You're not actually hosting a tracker in this case, only looking at incoming connections. And even if you do run a tracker, hard to make the case that the tracker itself is illega. Hosting something like opentrackr is like hosting a search engine, how they respond to legal takedown requests is where the crux is at, and whatever infra sits around the tracker, so police and courts c…

Because knowingly helping people commit crimes generally counts the same as committing the crime yourself. I.e. federally in the U.S. under 18 USC 2a https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2 The software you're running being "simple" isn't a defence for doing illegal things with it - like aiding others commit crimes.

There are a few internet/copyright safe harbor provisions (in the US) that might maybe (probably not) make it not a crime, I don't know, I'm not a lawyer. But your general thought when you hear "helping someone else commit a crime" ought to be "that's probably a crime itself".

Re: Resurrecting a dead torrent tracker and finding 3M peers

#15

Post by xyst »

Not illegal. But most people without resources to fight off the thinly veiled, strongly worded legal letters would probably fold under this light pressure.

Interesting, but I suppose it’s not surprising to see clients still holding references to old/defunct trackers. Those peers this person discovered once the tracker was resurrected are more than likely to be seed boxes. Maybe a few real clients if they found an old .torrent link and have left it open.

Thanks to DHT (trackerless peering), trackers have become mostly defunct.

Re: Resurrecting a dead torrent tracker and finding 3M peers

#19

Post by [deleted] »

zht wrote: post #12
fine_tune wrote: post #7

You bought a house that had a murder X years ago and are wondering if your guilty for the murder, probably not - aslong as you don't do more murder in it. I suppose real life is more interesting though, the guy who picked up the domain to stop the global ransomware crisis was picked up after Defcon if memory serves. Ironically your probably at more risk from the GDPR for leaking those IP addresses that connected to t…

I think it's more like you buy an abandoned house where people used to go buy drugs you buy the house and people are still coming knocking on your door asking you if you have any drugs to sell you're not doing anything wrong, but if the police notice people constantly coming to your house to buy drugs they may do something about it

[deleted]

Re: Resurrecting a dead torrent tracker and finding 3M peers

#20

Post by gpm »

fine_tune wrote: post #7

You bought a house that had a murder X years ago and are wondering if your guilty for the murder, probably not - aslong as you don't do more murder in it. I suppose real life is more interesting though, the guy who picked up the domain to stop the global ransomware crisis was picked up after Defcon if memory serves. Ironically your probably at more risk from the GDPR for leaking those IP addresses that connected to t…

This guy didn't just buy the haunted house that previously had signs directing serial killers to where the victims are, he also reinstalled the signs and opened it back up to the public knowing that the serial killers were still around and reading the signs.

I mean, it's a bit absurd to compare copyright infringement to murder, but that's where your analogy started. He didn't just by the domain and do something innocent, he actually started running the software that helps people pirate things strongly suspecting that pirates would use it to help them pirate things... and then when he observed that was reality he (smartly IMO) shut it down.

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