Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Resurrecting a dead torrent tracker and finding 3M peers

kianbradley.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 217 posts

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

#61

Post by gpm »

drob518 wrote: post #53
gpm wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's definitely a mens rea requirement here, that you know that a crime is being committed and that you intend to facilitate it. I doubt it requires particularized knowledge that "this specific request" is for a crime... I'm still not a lawyer. Running a service primarily for legal purposes that some criminals can take advantage of is pretty different with regards to intent than reviving an old domain name that yo…

IANAL, but I would think you’d also have to have specific mens rea. That is, it’s not illegal to use a torrent or facilitate a torrent, because it’s just a protocol that can be used for good or bad. If you were hosting movies and songs, whatever the protocol, that’s when you’re specifically engaging in piracy. It’s sort of like driving a car isn’t illegal, but being the getaway driver for a bank robbery is, even if y…

I'm not saying it's illegal to "run a torrent tracker". When Blizzard use to (pre 2015) update Starcraft via torrent I assume they ran their own tracker for that, and that was totally legal. Even if there was some way for a pirate to take advantage of the Blizzard tracker.

Here it's not the "mere fact that somebody could use your tracker for piracy". It's that you're literally observing that a bunch of old mostly-piracy torrents are pointing at this domain, and then deciding to turn this domain back into a service which assists in that piracy.

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

#63

Post by KomoD »

gpm wrote: post #61
drob518 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL, but I would think you’d also have to have specific mens rea. That is, it’s not illegal to use a torrent or facilitate a torrent, because it’s just a protocol that can be used for good or bad. If you were hosting movies and songs, whatever the protocol, that’s when you’re specifically engaging in piracy. It’s sort of like driving a car isn’t illegal, but being the getaway driver for a bank robbery is, even if y…

I'm not saying it's illegal to "run a torrent tracker". When Blizzard use to (pre 2015) update Starcraft via torrent I assume they ran their own tracker for that, and that was totally legal. Even if there was some way for a pirate to take advantage of the Blizzard tracker. Here it's not the "mere fact that somebody could use your tracker for piracy". It's that you're literally observing that a bunch of old mostly-pir…

> It's that you're literally observing that a bunch of old mostly-piracy torrents are pointing at this domain, and then deciding to turn this domain back into a service which assists in that piracy.

He doesn't know if they're mostly piracy or not, all he sees is a hash and the peers.

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

#66

Post by edude03 »

neckro23 wrote: post #47
sweeter wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely a few. Media companies often send out infringement notices to ISPs to be forwarded to the user and I would guess this is how they get those IPs

No tracker necessary, you can just use DHT: https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/

huh, weirdly it has stuff I did download and stuff I didn't download within minutes of each other ... should I be worried?

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

#68

Post by dymk »

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.

The RIAA doesn't have to sue to make OP's life miserable. They have enough lawyers on the payroll to drown him in perfectly legal demand letters. Go one step further and assume the demand letters are harassment - what's OP going to do, sue the RIAA?

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

#69

Post by lossolo »

edude03 wrote: post #66
neckro23 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No tracker necessary, you can just use DHT: https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/

huh, weirdly it has stuff I did download and stuff I didn't download within minutes of each other ... should I be worried?

Stop using DHT and/or public trackers and you will be safe. They scan public trackers and the DHT network.
Post reply on HN