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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: 0s | 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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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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legohead ◴[17 Jun 25 18:22 UTC] No.44302154[source]▶
No need to sue. Send a cease and desist and your average hacker like OP will take it down in a hurry...
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1. daneel_w ◴[17 Jun 25 22:37 UTC] No.44304740[source]▶
In this case not even a cease-and-desist was needed. Just seeing 1.7M peers crying out in the void for company was enough. Living in a country overly friendly with Hollywood and its money, I do understand him.
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2. account42 ◴[18 Jun 25 07:37 UTC] No.44307507[source]▶
Yes, prime example of a chilling effect where the fear of a lawsuit stops people from engaging in perfectly legal activities. It's unfortunate that copyright law does not concern itself with collateral damage like this.
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3. Suzuran ◴[18 Jun 25 12:33 UTC] No.44309315[source]▶
This is not collateral damage, this is the intended effect - decreasing their competition, legal or otherwise.