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Resurrecting a dead torrent tracker and finding 3M peers

(kianbradley.com)
655 points k-ian | 1 comments | 17 Jun 25 17:40 UTC | HN request time: 0.213s | 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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1. KomoD ◴[17 Jun 25 20:13 UTC] No.44303436[source]▶
(IANAL) It can be both legal and illegal

If you don't respond to takedowns, that's probably leaning towards being illegal*

If you respond to takedowns and blacklist the hashes, you're most likely fine*

*obviously depends on the jurisdiction and on whether matching hashes to IP:PORT is considered distribution/facilitation/whatever (take TPB's case as an example)

I know someone who ran a pretty large tracker for years, when he received a takedown he just blacklisted the hashes and he's been fine so far.