←back to thread

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: 0.212s | source
Show context
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.

replies(8): >>44302128 #>>44302134 #>>44302420 #>>44302712 #>>44303308 #>>44303436 #>>44305263 #>>44310124 #
jedberg ◴[17 Jun 25 18:20 UTC] No.44302134[source]▶
Do you think the police understand this nuance? Especially since most of the traffic that will go through there is probably copyright infringement?

They'll just see tracker and assume it's illegal.

replies(4): >>44302254 #>>44302766 #>>44306436 #>>44307437 #
vintermann ◴[18 Jun 25 07:24 UTC] No.44307437[source]▶
Traffic doesn't "go through there", that's the whole point of P2P. All a tracker does is let people find each other.
replies(1): >>44307714 #
1. jedberg ◴[18 Jun 25 08:09 UTC] No.44307714[source]▶
Traffic still goes through it. A seeder attaches and says "I am here and have these hashes". The a leecher connects and says "who has these hashes".

So yes, data "goes through it". Do you think law enforcement understands the nuance of metadata vs actual data?