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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: 0.23s | source
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aidenn0 ◴[17 Jun 25 18:43 UTC] No.44302408[source]▶
IANAL, but my understanding is that running a content-neutral tracker is legal in the US.

In other jurisdictions it most certainly is not, and the VPS maybe in a different jurisdiction and the .si TLD definitely is.

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jrochkind1 ◴[17 Jun 25 20:16 UTC] No.44303463[source]▶
Googling, there's been at least one tracker shut down by US law enforcement, EliteTorrents [2005] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-may-26-fi-torre...

I think there have probably been more. There are definitely more that had civil suits with MPAA etc suing for damages.

It may be somewhat harder to make the case in the US, but a tracker where a great majority of what's listed is copyrighted, I'm pretty sure it can be shut down in the US.

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NoMoreNicksLeft ◴[17 Jun 25 21:38 UTC] No.44304234[source]▶
Was that the actual tracker and tracker only, or was there a web front end that hosted all the torrent files and forums and so forth? Because the latter will make you a big target.

God I miss rarbg. And KAT.

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jrochkind1 ◴[17 Jun 25 22:44 UTC] No.44304798[source]▶
I'm curious the nature of the US laws that would make the web front end illegal (or subject to civil penalties?) but not the tracker?
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1. aidenn0 ◴[18 Jun 25 04:38 UTC] No.44306715[source]▶
A tracker is ostensibly a content-neutral middleman. Your ISP isn't illegal (and until recently was not thought to be subject to civil penalties; now there is at least one ongoing case) either.

A lot of these websites were "come here and pirate lots of shit," often had tools to make it easier to specifically search for infringing content, and would remove torrents that were not tagged correctly. In many cases some of the people running the sites were also seeding.

That makes it hard to argue "we're just passing packets"