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The US took down kickasstorrents and arrested its founder in Poland despite them following the DMCA. You have to suck up the media companies to be allowed to ho
by phoneperson 5y ago
The US took down kickasstorrents and arrested its founder in Poland despite them following the DMCA. You have to suck up the media companies to be allowed to host a service these days.
- CobrastanJorji 5y agoThe DMCA is complicated, but you may not qualify as a safe harbor if you have actual knowledge of infringing content or if you're aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent. Running a website called "Kickasstorrents" may not qualify. But in the realpolitik sense, I agree. Foreign company, angry US business interests, etc. I doubt this was argued out reasonably in a court beforehand.
- xmprt 5y agoTorrents aren't necessarily illegal so I'm not sure why running a website called "kickasstorrents" is relevant. I've seen a lot of software legally distributed using torrents where even the software creators link to torrents that you can use.
- coldtea 5y ago>Torrents aren't necessarily illegal so I'm not sure why running a website called "kickasstorrents" is relevant. Because we all know that website and what torrents it had. That "torrents aren't necessarily illegal" are neither here, nor there. Their torrents were illegal. (Not that I'm against it, but well, it's not like they're fooling anyone with the "torrents aren't necessarily illegal" defense for their particular case. That wasn't some FOSS/PD software torrent site, and that wasn't why people visited it, or why it was run...).
- beernutz 5y agoTorrents themselves are NOT illegal. They contain no copyrighted data. At all.
- rtkwe 5y agoIt's close enough though that it's a pretty easy case to make for contributory infringement.
- mechanical_bear 5y agoThat certainly isn’t settled law.
- coldtea 5y agoGood luck arguing that in court
- coldtea 5y agoThat's more like a drug dealer caught with 200 plastic bags of cocaine saying plastic bags are not illegal, they contain no drug substances at all. Sure, but most of the torrents they had there pointed to copyrighted data, and facilitated their download, which is illegal.
- phoneperson 5y agoMore like someone telling people who their dealer is, except the dealers give away copies of books for free, some legal but most illegal.
- nitrogen 5y agoTheir torrents were illegal. Was that true in the countries where they had a local presence?
- phoneperson 5y agoI did download an Ubuntu ISO from there more than a decade ago, and some films that I presume were in the public domain due to their age.
- monocasa 5y agoInterestingly, copyright for video is very complicated, and the remastering process necessary to convert from film stock to digital generally has enough creative input legally to be considered valid for copyright protection. I don't think it's currently possible for a digital film to be aged out of copyright.
- coldtea 5y agoWell, my drug dealer also sold me a watch once. But 99% he had crack for sale.
- markdown 5y ago> Their torrents were illegal. Illegal in the US.
- coldtea 5y agoAnd most of the world, where international agreements hold.