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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

#151

Post by dahrkael »

DaSHacka wrote: post #109
edm0nd wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

private trackers and warez groups are the plentiful (IPTorrents, Speed, etc) if you are a good seeder and can maintain good ratios. anyone using a public tracker in 2025 deserves anything their ISP catches them doing imo. public trackers and torrent sites are also just 90% malware and RATs.

> anyone using a public tracker in 2025 deserves anything their ISP catches them doing imo. Or you could just use a VPN, which you probably should for private trackers too anyway.

it is my understanding that some private trackers dont allow you to use VPNs or risk a ban

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

#153

Post by globular-toast »

jldugger wrote: post #121
57473m3n7Fur7h3 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really going to be all that bad? The BitTorrent clients I’ve used all seemed pretty polite, backing off for like 60s at least for each tracker they can’t connect to. If you buy one of the dead tracker domains and point it at an IP of someone else, but their services aren’t even listening on the port client wants to connect to (and don’t speak BitTorrent even if the port happened to coincide), I can’t imagine th…

It can be: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2015/01/chinese-bittorrent-the-gift...

Careful. This guy doesn't like HN and you'll get a picture of a testicle if you click.

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

#154

Post by diffeomorphism »

ranger_danger wrote: post #149
jekwoooooe wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this legal isn’t a useful question. The better question is how likely are you to get sued? With civil lawsuits it doesn’t matter if it’s legal you can be sued and harassed by lawyers if you get on their radar.

> Is this legal isn’t a useful question Why do you say that? I think even seemingly "useless" questions can lead to valuable discussions and insights... and it might also be possible that your perspective is not the only valid one. What's useful (or not) to one person is not always the same for others.

You may want to adjust your LLM settings. Your post seemingly dropped everything but the first sentence from the context window and then wrote vapid fluff that makes no sense in context.

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

#155

Post by noobermin »

Noelia- wrote: post #152

I used to think those old trackers were long dead, but it’s wild to see them still pulling in millions of peers. P2P may have faded from the spotlight, but the infrastructure never really went away.

I guess...the question is...who? Surely people have to pay to keep these peers just running. 3.1 million is how many millions of dollars in infra per month? I guess it's distributed amongst millions or thousands of people, sure, or may be most of them are bots.

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

#156

Post by vintermann »

jedberg wrote: post #4
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…

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.

Traffic doesn't "go through there", that's the whole point of P2P. All a tracker does is let people find each other.

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

#157

Post by notpushkin »

necovek wrote: post #132
gpm wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He did not choose the domain name by chance. He chose it because he observed it was previously in use as a tracker for copyright infringing torrents. The police/courts/jury is not obliged to put blinders on just because you would prefer if they did. The mere fact that the domain name was previously used for this is almost certainly probable cause to get search warrants that will almost certainly provide the requisite…

They explicitly used it to download "Linux isos", which are highly likely not copyright infringing (they are usually free to distribute). Eg. Canonical distributes Ubuntu via BitTorrent too: https://ubuntu.com/download/alternative-downloads Edit: I missed the "uh," in the OP: I stand corrected.

They explicitly used it to “download ‘Linux isos’”, indeed!

But yeah, I don’t think Canonical would use open.demonii.si as a tracker for their torrents.

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

#158

Post by account42 »

legohead wrote: post #6
jekwoooooe wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this legal isn’t a useful question. The better question is how likely are you to get sued? With civil lawsuits it doesn’t matter if it’s legal you can be sued and harassed by lawyers if you get on their radar.

No need to sue. Send a cease and desist and your average hacker like OP will take it down in a hurry...

I think the point is that you can't count on that and need to assume that you are going to attract actual lawsuits. DMCA provides easier take down options for copyright owners but AFAIK does not compel them to make use of those options before going to court.

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

#159

Post by account42 »

daneel_w wrote: post #103
legohead wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need to sue. Send a cease and desist and your average hacker like OP will take it down in a hurry...

In this case not even a cease-and-desist was needed. Just seeing 1.7M peers crying out in the void for company was enough. Living in a country overly friendly with Hollywood and its money, I do understand him.

Yes, prime example of a chilling effect where the fear of a lawsuit stops people from engaging in perfectly legal activities. It's unfortunate that copyright law does not concern itself with collateral damage like this.

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

#160

Post by account42 »

bilekas wrote: post #49
jekwoooooe wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this legal isn’t a useful question. The better question is how likely are you to get sued? With civil lawsuits it doesn’t matter if it’s legal you can be sued and harassed by lawyers if you get on their radar.

I’m not sure if that’s true actually, you might get a takedown notice, but to sue, and maybe I’m wrong but you have to claim damages, all op has to do is not announce out? IE he can see the peer pool but they don’t announce the peer list.

Exactly, you might just get a takedown notice. Or you might not if someone decides they want to burn you in court. This is how chilling effects from copyright laws can suppress perfectly legal speech.
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