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Resurrecting a dead torrent tracker and finding 3M peers

(kianbradley.com)
655 points k-ian | 7 comments | 17 Jun 25 17:40 UTC | HN request time: 0.531s | 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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jekwoooooe ◴[17 Jun 25 18:19 UTC] No.44302128[source]▶
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.
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bilekas ◴[17 Jun 25 20:01 UTC] No.44303299[source]▶
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.

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1. dymk ◴[17 Jun 25 20:45 UTC] No.44303753[source]▶
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?
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2. ◴[17 Jun 25 23:57 UTC] No.44305285[source]▶
3. Retric ◴[18 Jun 25 02:35 UTC] No.44306169[source]▶
Nahh, for a bunch of annoying letters take them to small claims court. Cheap for you, expensive for them, and you win if they don’t show up.
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4. dymk ◴[18 Jun 25 04:58 UTC] No.44306786[source]▶
haha, no, this is not their first rodeo
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5. account42 ◴[18 Jun 25 07:41 UTC] No.44307527[source]▶
This is a cool feel good theory but can you show an example of this working?
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6. Retric ◴[18 Jun 25 09:49 UTC] No.44308285{3}[source]▶
It’s not the kind of thing that generally makes the news. One example that was is a guy who was making good money doing this to spam callers. His case was bolstered by asking to be put on their no call list and then them ignoring that, but the point is the vast majority of people don’t do it even if in theory they could.

However the important bit isn’t winning in a harassment case but having documentation to get them to stop in the future.

7. Retric ◴[18 Jun 25 09:53 UTC] No.44308305{3}[source]▶
Sure, but that’s why they avoid this kind of harassment in the first place.

You made a hypothetical assuming they would do something they wouldn’t because it puts them at risk.