4 ms·

> Look at the current incarnation of the pirate bay. It doesn't even link to infringing content. It just gives you the ID code of a file that helps you find in

by tormeh 10y ago

> Look at the current incarnation of the pirate bay. It doesn't even link to infringing content. It just gives you the ID code of a file that helps you find infringing files. There's no tracker, there aren't even .torrent files. Now look at how many places it's banned. Was this really the best example you could come up with? Because that's clearly the law working as intended.

Dylan16807 10y ago
Even if that's the intent, it's pretty hard to reconcile how copyright law acts nothing like anything else. If I make a website that describes the effects of various designer drugs in glowing terms, and the closest I get to helping you buy some is telling you the chemical ID, I'm very easily on the legal side of things.
- smallnamespace 10y ago
  > closest I get to helping you buy some is telling you the chemical ID How are those things in any way comparable? Knowing the chemical formula of a drug doesn't get you any closer to possessing it, but knowing the ID of a torrent lets you immediately download it. At the end of the day, would you want law to be based on technical trivia, which can rapidly change, or do you want it be based on the intent of the persons involved?
  - Dylan16807 10y ago
    You can put the ID of a chemical into a black market search engine just as you can put the ID of a torrent into the DHT search mechanisms. Both require that you know where to go, and use a third party search system to find the people that actually have the illegal material. At the end of the day, I want the responsibility to be on the people actually performing illegal distribution. And when someone provides a listing of what is available illegally, without who or where to get it from, that should be legal. In your opinion, if someone writes a highly-convincing page encouraging you to smoke opium, is that intent okay? Because to me that seems about equally far-removed from any drug crime as your typical torrent search engine is from infringement.
    - smallnamespace 10y ago
      But the distribution of profit is completely different in those two cases, and that's legally relevant. When you go on the dark web and buy something illegal, the money goes to the seller, whereas presumably nobody is directly profiting from the torrents.
      - Dylan16807 10y ago
        The obvious question then is how you classify a pirate bay clone that has no ads. No profits.
        ryanlol 10y ago
        Are you being serious here? How do you think courts deal with these issues every day? Common sense. A pirate bay clone would still be knowingly and intentionally distributing links to infringing material, whether or not doing so without a financial incentive is illegal depends on the jurisdiction.
        Dylan16807 10y ago
        And what makes it different from the hypothetical drug blog? I'm not saying it's innocent, I'm saying there's some weird mismatch here where you can't go with a mile of a copyright infringement but you can get pretty close to normal crimes as long as you don't touch anything or join a conspiracy.
        bediger4000 10y ago
        If only determining that something is infringing were that easy. Given that everything fixed in a tangible form is copyrighted, and then copyright lasts until after the author has died, I have to know who fixed the material, when, and if they're still alive. It's an impossible situation, and you're glossing over it like it's easy and automatic. So: common sense doesn't enter into it.
- biot 10y ago
  Torrent sites merely hosting an ID that describes a file? You say that as if they are publishing UPC codes. The problem with that description is that clicking the ID launches an application that connects to other peers and proceeds to download the file in question in violation of copyright law. That's the entire point. The equivalent would be a site that contains an ID for illegal drugs, and when you click the link it connects to a pharmaceutical 3D printer that instantly constructs the drug from raw materials in violation of narcotics law.
  - Dylan16807 10y ago
    > The equivalent would be a site that contains an ID for illegal drugs, and when you click the link it connects to a pharmaceutical 3D printer that instantly constructs the drug from raw materials in violation of narcotics law. And the user had to previously choose how to route these requests to 3D printers through a completely independent application. The original site itself doesn't make the IDs do anything. By default clicking those magnet links does nothing at all. A UPC code is a good analogy. So the printer is clearly doing illegal things. But is the original site illegal because a totally different person automated drug-buying? And it's not a pachinko setup either. These are truly independent actors.
    - biot 10y ago
      "Golly, your honor, I had no idea that magnet links could be clickable and that, if people clicked, they could download the file, thereby facilitating copyright infringement..." Good luck selling that line of argument. You might have an argument if the protocol actually did trigger off of unlinked UPC codes and sites didn't have to construct special links that conform to a standard (in which case you could download movies by browsing Amazon or IMDB). But if a site publishes magnet links there is no denying knowledge of what those links do. Or I guess you could try to deny but no judge or jury with an IQ over 50 would believe it.
      - Dylan16807 10y ago
        I'm not saying the argument should be ignorance, rather that it should be lack of causality. The user has to specifically configure their system to turn these magnet IDs into a piracy opportunity. Or they have to copy each one into their torrent client of choice. Just like if I review an illegal drug and tell everyone exactly what it is so you can get the right thing from your supplier... I'm still not your supplier, I don't know who you are or where you go to buy such things. I'm not in the drug trade. I'm sure I can find plenty of 5 star weed reviews that nobody would call illegal, even though they're calling out specific brands in a way that someone could trivially turn into a purchase.
- ori_b 10y ago
  > and the closest I get to helping you buy some is telling you the chemical ID, I'm very easily on the legal side of things. And if there was a tool that would pop out, at no additional cost, an instance of the drug based on the chemical ID, I'm fairly sure that it would be considered distribution. If it wasn't, then within short order, the law would likely be changed to fix that loophole.

by tormeh 10y ago

Dylan16807 10y ago

Even if that's the intent, it's pretty hard to reconcile how copyright law acts nothing like anything else. If I make a website that describes the effects of various designer drugs in glowing terms, and the closest I get to helping you buy some is telling you the chemical ID, I'm very easily on the legal side of things.

smallnamespace 10y ago
> closest I get to helping you buy some is telling you the chemical ID How are those things in any way comparable? Knowing the chemical formula of a drug doesn't get you any closer to possessing it, but knowing the ID of a torrent lets you immediately download it. At the end of the day, would you want law to be based on technical trivia, which can rapidly change, or do you want it be based on the intent of the persons involved?
- Dylan16807 10y ago
  You can put the ID of a chemical into a black market search engine just as you can put the ID of a torrent into the DHT search mechanisms. Both require that you know where to go, and use a third party search system to find the people that actually have the illegal material. At the end of the day, I want the responsibility to be on the people actually performing illegal distribution. And when someone provides a listing of what is available illegally, without who or where to get it from, that should be legal. In your opinion, if someone writes a highly-convincing page encouraging you to smoke opium, is that intent okay? Because to me that seems about equally far-removed from any drug crime as your typical torrent search engine is from infringement.
  - smallnamespace 10y ago
    But the distribution of profit is completely different in those two cases, and that's legally relevant. When you go on the dark web and buy something illegal, the money goes to the seller, whereas presumably nobody is directly profiting from the torrents.
    - Dylan16807 10y ago
      The obvious question then is how you classify a pirate bay clone that has no ads. No profits.
      - ryanlol 10y ago
        Are you being serious here? How do you think courts deal with these issues every day? Common sense. A pirate bay clone would still be knowingly and intentionally distributing links to infringing material, whether or not doing so without a financial incentive is illegal depends on the jurisdiction.
        Dylan16807 10y ago
        And what makes it different from the hypothetical drug blog? I'm not saying it's innocent, I'm saying there's some weird mismatch here where you can't go with a mile of a copyright infringement but you can get pretty close to normal crimes as long as you don't touch anything or join a conspiracy.
        bediger4000 10y ago
        If only determining that something is infringing were that easy. Given that everything fixed in a tangible form is copyrighted, and then copyright lasts until after the author has died, I have to know who fixed the material, when, and if they're still alive. It's an impossible situation, and you're glossing over it like it's easy and automatic. So: common sense doesn't enter into it.
biot 10y ago
Torrent sites merely hosting an ID that describes a file? You say that as if they are publishing UPC codes. The problem with that description is that clicking the ID launches an application that connects to other peers and proceeds to download the file in question in violation of copyright law. That's the entire point. The equivalent would be a site that contains an ID for illegal drugs, and when you click the link it connects to a pharmaceutical 3D printer that instantly constructs the drug from raw materials in violation of narcotics law.
- Dylan16807 10y ago
  > The equivalent would be a site that contains an ID for illegal drugs, and when you click the link it connects to a pharmaceutical 3D printer that instantly constructs the drug from raw materials in violation of narcotics law. And the user had to previously choose how to route these requests to 3D printers through a completely independent application. The original site itself doesn't make the IDs do anything. By default clicking those magnet links does nothing at all. A UPC code is a good analogy. So the printer is clearly doing illegal things. But is the original site illegal because a totally different person automated drug-buying? And it's not a pachinko setup either. These are truly independent actors.
  - biot 10y ago
    "Golly, your honor, I had no idea that magnet links could be clickable and that, if people clicked, they could download the file, thereby facilitating copyright infringement..." Good luck selling that line of argument. You might have an argument if the protocol actually did trigger off of unlinked UPC codes and sites didn't have to construct special links that conform to a standard (in which case you could download movies by browsing Amazon or IMDB). But if a site publishes magnet links there is no denying knowledge of what those links do. Or I guess you could try to deny but no judge or jury with an IQ over 50 would believe it.
    - Dylan16807 10y ago
      I'm not saying the argument should be ignorance, rather that it should be lack of causality. The user has to specifically configure their system to turn these magnet IDs into a piracy opportunity. Or they have to copy each one into their torrent client of choice. Just like if I review an illegal drug and tell everyone exactly what it is so you can get the right thing from your supplier... I'm still not your supplier, I don't know who you are or where you go to buy such things. I'm not in the drug trade. I'm sure I can find plenty of 5 star weed reviews that nobody would call illegal, even though they're calling out specific brands in a way that someone could trivially turn into a purchase.
ori_b 10y ago
> and the closest I get to helping you buy some is telling you the chemical ID, I'm very easily on the legal side of things. And if there was a tool that would pop out, at no additional cost, an instance of the drug based on the chemical ID, I'm fairly sure that it would be considered distribution. If it wasn't, then within short order, the law would likely be changed to fix that loophole.