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Resurrecting a dead torrent tracker and finding 3M peers

(kianbradley.com)
655 points k-ian | 11 comments | 17 Jun 25 17:40 UTC | HN request time: 1.873s | source | bottom
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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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rockskon ◴[17 Jun 25 19:02 UTC] No.44302635[source]▶
Wouldn't particular knowledge be required? I'm sure Google devs know in the abstract that Google search is used by criminals to help them in committing crimes, but that clearly is not illegal in and of itself.
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gpm ◴[17 Jun 25 19:22 UTC] No.44302867[source]▶
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 you know is primarily used by old illegal torrents as a tracker.

I spent a few minutes googling, and it seems like that at least as of a decade ago the exact bounds here weren't well defined: https://www.scotusblog.com/2014/03/opinion-analysis-justice-...

> Finally, the possible liability for an “incidental facilitator” – such as a firearms dealer who knows that some customers will use their purchases for crime – is noted but not resolved. Thus, thankfully, there is still some fertile ground for hypotheticals with which we practicing law professors can bedevil our students.

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1. drob518 ◴[17 Jun 25 20:04 UTC] No.44303334[source]▶
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 you never enter the bank. The car isn’t the problem, it’s what you are using it for. It’s also not illegal to sell a car to a bank robber, even if that’s a possibility, unless you reasonably believe that the particular person you were selling it to is a bank robber and will be using it to commit a crime. The mere fact that somebody could use your tracker for piracy doesn’t loop you into the conspiracy unless you specifically know that they are committing piracy. This is why the telecom companies all have carve outs for this sort of thing. Carrying packets or voice traffic of someone planning a crime doesn’t loop the telecom company into the conspiracy.
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2. gpm ◴[17 Jun 25 20:20 UTC] No.44303496[source]▶
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.

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3. KomoD ◴[17 Jun 25 20:23 UTC] No.44303532[source]▶
> 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.

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4. drob518 ◴[17 Jun 25 20:49 UTC] No.44303802{3}[source]▶
Exactly.
5. gpm ◴[17 Jun 25 22:06 UTC] No.44304478{3}[source]▶
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 proof beyond a reasonable doubt that he has in fact intentionally both committed himself, and aided others in committing (because he knew what the domain name was, or at least recognized it as similar to demonoid and could guess), copyright infringement. And that's without the blog post... (which I assume in the hypothetical where he chose to keep running this he would not have posted).

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6. necovek ◴[18 Jun 25 03:50 UTC] No.44306504{4}[source]▶
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.

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7. notpushkin ◴[18 Jun 25 07:30 UTC] No.44307470{5}[source]▶
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.

8. immibis ◴[18 Jun 25 08:52 UTC] No.44307994{5}[source]▶
They wrote "download Linux ISO"s" yet they're using an old piracy tracker domain, which Linux ISOs don't use. The court is not stupid.
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9. ranger_danger ◴[18 Jun 25 19:22 UTC] No.44312606{6}[source]▶
For the purposes of a criminal case, yes, they are intentionally stupid... it's up to the prosecution to prove "beyond a reasonable doubt" that something they did was illegal and that they knew it and chose to do it anyway. What a judge/jury thinks about this person, or "linux ISOs", is irrelevant... their job is only to interpret the information given to them.
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10. immibis ◴[19 Jun 25 09:57 UTC] No.44317056{7}[source]▶
There is no reasonable doubt that the domain used is for piracy and the defendant knew as much.

"Beyond a reasonable doubt" doesn't mean you can just say "no that's not true" about anything and have it not count. It's beyond a reasonable doubt, not beyond any doubt. It's not reasonable that this tracker address was gotten from a Linux ISO. Perhaps the defendant could claim they got it from a list of trackers, but they already admitted they didn't, so that's not reasonable either.

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11. ranger_danger ◴[19 Jun 25 15:24 UTC] No.44319553{8}[source]▶
> There is no reasonable doubt that the domain used is for piracy and the defendant knew as much.

Even if that were proven as true, so what? There's nothing illegal about using the domain itself.

> It's not reasonable that this tracker address was gotten from a Linux ISO

Sorry but you don't get to be the judge of that, the judge does.