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Resurrecting a dead torrent tracker and finding 3M peers

(kianbradley.com)
655 points k-ian | 3 comments | 17 Jun 25 17:40 UTC | HN request time: 0.804s | source
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diggan ◴[17 Jun 25 18:17 UTC] No.44302108[source]▶
> 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 can see/assume the intent. But trackers are pretty stupid coordination server software, would be crazy if they became illegal.

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gpm ◴[17 Jun 25 18:44 UTC] No.44302420[source]▶
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".

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diggan ◴[17 Jun 25 19:25 UTC] No.44302899[source]▶
> knowingly helping people commit crimes generally

Right, that makes sense. Is running a tracker "knowingly helping people commit crimes"? I feel like that's a huge jump, there is a wide range of content coordinated by trackers and the DHT.

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1. gpm ◴[17 Jun 25 19:32 UTC] No.44302956[source]▶
It's not like he just started a random new torrent tracker... he took over an old domain that was previously in use by people pirating stuff after observing that torrents were still pointing to the tracker and ran a tracker on that domain. That's a pretty direct line to "he knew this would be used for copyright infringement".
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2. Dylan16807 ◴[18 Jun 25 05:23 UTC] No.44306887[source]▶
What kind of threshold do courts tend to put on that, for the percentage of illegal activity? Because pretty much any service that connects lots of people together is guaranteed to have some.
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3. ranger_danger ◴[18 Jun 25 15:45 UTC] No.44310897[source]▶
I've read most of these comments and I think it's clear most people have no idea how criminal court cases work.

For one, a judge/jury does not infer things they are "supposed to know", such as whether torrents are mostly used for piracy or not... they only operate based on the evidence presented.

There is a very large burden of proof in criminal cases, requiring that their intent to facilitate a crime be proven "beyond a reasonable doubt".

Trying to say "everyone knows linux ISOs is code for piracy" or claim that "a judge would see right through that" is simply not how things work... decisions cannot be made based on any type of prior knowledge like that.

The entire point of a criminal court case (as a prosecutor) is to convince a judge/jury that the defendant is guilty using evidence and testimony, which means they must prove that there was clear intent to commit/facilitate a crime, i.e. they knew it was illegal and did it anyway.

Simply running a torrent tracker in and of itself doesn't prove any of that.