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492 points vladyslavfox | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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trompetenaccoun ◴[] No.41895988[source]
We need archives built on decentralized storage. Don't get me wrong, I really like and support the work Internet Archive is doing, but preserving history is too important to entrust it solely to singular entities, which means singular points of failure.
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jdiff ◴[] No.41896411[source]
This seems to get brought at least once in the comments for every one of these articles that pops up.

The IA has tried distributing their stores, but nowhere near enough people actually put their storage where their mouths are.

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WarOnPrivacy ◴[] No.41897206[source]
> nowhere near enough people actually put their storage where their mouths are.

Typically because most people who have the upload, don't know that they can. And if they come to the notion on their own, they won't know how.

If they put the notion to a search engine, the keywords they come up with probably don't return the needed ELI5 page.

As in: How do I [?] for the Internet Archive?, most folks won't know what [?] needs to be.

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TZubiri ◴[] No.41897342[source]
This is literally torrents. Just give up
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briandear ◴[] No.41897746[source]
The problem with torrents is they have a bad reputation since people use it to steal and redistribute other people’s content without their consent.
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AlienRobot ◴[] No.41898015[source]
Give it a good reputation then.

What are some legal torrent trackers?

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ranger_danger ◴[] No.41898642[source]
What is your definition of a legal torrent tracker? I was not aware there were even any illegal ones.
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mikae1 ◴[] No.41898792[source]
> I was not aware there were even any illegal ones.

Depends on the jurisdiction. Remember what happened in the The Pirate Bay trial?

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ranger_danger ◴[] No.41899902[source]
My understanding is that that court case did not show that operating a torrent tracker is illegal, but specifically operating a (any) service with the explicit intent of violating copyright... huge difference IMO.

To me that's not even related to it being a torrent tracker, just that they were "aiding and abetting" copyright infringement.

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TZubiri ◴[] No.41900035[source]
Ok. But what is the case law in hosting illegal content? Sure you may operate a torrent, but if your client is distributing child porn, in my view, you bear responsibility.
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defrost ◴[] No.41900224[source]
I'm backing ranger_danger here.

In Law the technicalities matter.

Trackers generally do not host any content, just hashcodes and (sometimes) meta data descriptions of content.

If "your" (ie let's say _you_ TZubiri) client is distributing child pornography content because you have a partially downloaded CP file then that's on _you_ and not on the tracker.

The "tracker" has unique hashcode signatures of tens of millions of torrents - it literaly just puts clients (such as the one that you might be running yourself on your machine in the example above) in touch with other clients who are "just asking" about the same unique hashcode signature.

Some tracker affiliated websites (eg: TPB) might host searchable indexes of metadata associated with specific torrents (and still not host the torrents themselves) but "pure" trackers can literally operate with zero knowledge of any content - just arrange handshakes between clients looking for matching hashes - whether that's UbuntuLatest or DonkeyNotKong

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TZubiri ◴[] No.41900486[source]
We agree in that if my client distributes illegal content, I am responsible, at least in part.

On the other hand I also believe that a tracker that hosts hashes of illegal content, provides search facilities for and facilitates their download, is responsible, in a big way. That's my personal opinion and I think it's backed in cases like the pirate bay and sci hub.

That 0 knowledge tracker is interesting, my first reaction is that it's going to end up in very nasty places like Tor, onion, etc..

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defrost ◴[] No.41900676[source]
> That 0 knowledge tracker is interesting,

Most actual trackers are zero knowledge.

A tracker (bit of central software that handles 100+ thousand connections/second) is not a "torrent site" such as TPB, EZTV, etc.

A tracker handshakes torrent clients and introduces peers to each other, it has no idea nor needs an idea that "SomeName 1080p DSPN" maps to D23F5C5AAE3D5C361476108C97557F200327718A

All it needs is to store IP addresses that are interested in that hash and to pass handfuls of interested IP addresses to other interested parties (and some other bookkeeping).

From an actual tracker PoV the content is irrelevant and there's no means of telling one thing from another other than size - it's how trackers have operated for 20+ years now.

Here are some actual tracker addresses and ports

    udp://tracker.opentrackr.org:1337/announce
    udp://p4p.arenabg.com:1337/announce
    udp://tracker.torrent.eu.org:451/announce
    udp://tracker.dler.org:6969/announce
    udp://open.stealth.si:80/announce
    udp://ipv4.tracker.harry.lu:80/announce
    https://opentracker.i2p.rocks:443/announce
Here's the bittorrent protocol: http://bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0052.html

Trackers can hand out .torrent files if asked (bencoded dictionaries that describe filenames, sizes, checksums, directory structures of a torrents contents) but they don't have to; mostly they hand out peer lists of other clients .. peers can also answer requests for .torrent files.

A .torrent file isn't enough to determine illegal content.

Pornography can be contained in files labelled "BeautifulSunset.mkv" and Rick Astley parody videos can frequently be found in files labelled "DirtyFilthyRepubicanFootTappingNudeAfrica.avi"

Given that it's not clear how trackers could effectively filter by content that never actually traverses their servers.

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GoblinSlayer ◴[] No.41906150{7}[source]
Are you sure open.stealth.si is a zero knowledge tracker? Some trackers reject unregistered torrents.
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1. defrost ◴[] No.41910175{8}[source]
The list I gave was of some public trackers, I made no claim that they were zero knowledge trackers, I simply made a statement that trackers needn't be aware of .torrent file manifests in order to share peer lists.

I also indicated above that having knowledge of .torrent manifests is problematic as that doesn't provide real actual knowledge of file contents just knowledge of file names ... LatestActionMovie.mkv might be a rootkit virus and HappyBunnyRabbits.avi might be the worst most exploitative underage pornography you can think of.

Some trackers are also private and require membership keys to access.

I was skating a lot as TZubiri seems unaware of many of the actual details and legitimate use cases, existing law, etc.