5 ms·

I wonder how this would impact a torrent search engine hosted in Australia

by alfiedotwtf 4y ago

tobyjsullivan 4y ago
Would that be more akin to facilitating a crime? (I don't know anything about law - and even less about Aussie law)
- politician 4y ago
  It’s interesting, right? I’ll bet it depends on the relative wealth of the parties.
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    > I’ll bet it depends on the relative wealth of the parties. Sure, in the same way that the outcome of an election depends on the relative amount of campaign spending by each side. This is an example of a belief that is extremely common despite the fact that there is a mountain of evidence contradicting it and almost nothing in support.
    - chid 4y ago
      I'm not sure what you mean by a mount of evidence contradicting? https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/money-and-elections-a-complicated-love-story/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/money-and-elections-a-c... Obviously it's not going to be 100% success... but are you saying that marketing doesn't work?
      - ask_b123 4y ago
        > Turns out, advertising, the main thing campaigns spend their money on, doesn’t work all that well. But > unlike in the general election, early fundraising strongly predicted who would win primary races.
      - thaumasiotes 4y ago
        > I'm not sure what you mean by a mount[ain] of evidence contradicting? > https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/money-and-elections-a-complicated-love-story/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/money-and-elections-a-c... Your own link is fairly explicit about this: > “I think where you have to change your thinking is that money causes winning,” said Richard Lau, professor of political science at Rutgers. “I think it’s more that winning attracts money.” > decades of research suggest that money probably isn’t the deciding factor in who wins a general election, and especially not for incumbents. > Most of the research on this was done in the last century, Bonica told me, and it generally found that spending didn’t affect wins for incumbents and that the impact for challengers was unclear. > the strong raw association between raising the most cash and winning probably has more to do with big donors who can tell (based on polls or knowledge of the district or just gut-feeling woo-woo magic) that one candidate is more likely to win — and then they give that person all their money. > 80 to 90 percent of congressional races have outcomes that are effectively predetermined by the district’s partisan makeup — and the people that win those elections are still given (and then must spend) ridiculous sums of money because, again, big donors like to curry favor with candidates they know are a sure thing.
    - brigandish 4y ago
      In the UK one of the two wealthiest parties always wins. Strangely enough, they've set up party financing and spending rules to suit themselves.
    - th1s1sit 4y ago
      Why would you try and find physical evidence of a mental hallucination except brain activity? Capitalism does not “actually exist”. It’s learned constraints on agency. I can’t just walk into Musks house and eat his food. I can’t walk into Tesla and alter products due to my meat bag not being referred to as billionaire Elon Musk. How much more evidence story mode still runs the world do you need?
    - politician 4y ago
      Partiality in law is clear and the evidence is overwhelming. Poor defendants lose while wealthy defendants can drag out the process indefinitely. Wealthy plaintiffs can bankrupt individuals trying to defend themselves: the music industry used this strategy during the time of Napster -- feel free to look it up. Impartiality is the hypothetical story we tell ourselves to make us feel good about, for example, Hunter Biden taking selfies with 20g of crack cocaine while black men do 10 years or more for the same crime. There are so many examples that if this one offends your politics, let me know, and I'll provide you with examples that will comport with your preferred media source.
      - thaumasiotes 4y ago
        Problems in the law are clear; partiality less so. Are there more black men who post selfies online with 20g of crack and never get charged for it, or more who go to jail for having 20g of crack? When Hunter Biden gets extra protection from the law, does that source more from his money or from his political status? When Michael Milken got extra persecution from the law, was his wealth an asset or a liability?
        politician 4y ago
        When high-status individuals get away with well-documented crimes with zero or minimal consequences while low-status individuals are taken to the cleaners by zealous prosecutors eager to pump their conviction rates, the public learns that all men are not equal before the law and that corruption is acceptable to the people that matter. This is well-understood and I’m not breaking any new ground here by saying so. What I am saying that is perhaps offensive or provocative is that this happens in the USA.
        thaumasiotes 4y ago
        Sorry, were we talking about partiality to high-status individuals or partiality to wealthy individuals?
        4y ago
chid 4y ago
I doubt it would 'allow' it, given that the Federal Court has ordered ISP to 'censor' certain torrent websites. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Australia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Austr... It is an interesting point though, it's not publishing but in my limited understand it just means that Google isn't bound by links that it has on its pages.
- cmroanirgo 4y ago
  As much as I'd like torrents to be more tolerated, there is a difference in that the torrent sites contain the .torrent files which contains all the necessary info to download files. ie, They're supplying more than just a link.
  - r3trohack3r 4y ago
    This isn't true for magnet links, which are just hashes that are used as keys in the DHT'S KV store. Example is btdigg which exclusively crawls and indexes magnet links from the DHT
    - Gigachad 4y ago
      There is legally and effectively nothing different about the two. They both give you what you need to get the file. The extra layer of indirection of having to get peers from DHT rather than a tracker doesn't matter.
      - d0mine 4y ago
        Given the topic is the difference between an article and a link to it (one level of indirection), the indirection does matter (at least, if you are google).
      - Dylan16807 4y ago
        > They both give you what you need to get the file. I can give you what you need just by telling you to torrent f09c8d0884590088f4004e010a928f8b6178c2fd That's even less than a hyperlink. It would be absolutely ridiculous to say that I'm publishing the torrent.
quickthrower2 4y ago
I guess it means they couldn't be sued for defamation because of the contents of one of the torrents?
- cwillu 4y ago
  So long as they didn't encourage discussion of the contents of the torrent (paragraph 33) nor enticed the user to choose that torrent over another one (paragraph 51). Or anything else considered in the decision (I'm only a quarter of the way through reading it :p)
ponco 4y ago
It's a defamation case and you will note the main question was whether or not publication occurred. The rules governing dissemination of copyrighted material are completely different.
- d0mine 4y ago
  if providing a link by google to an article is not publishing then why do you think providing e.g., a hyperlink to a magnet link by a torrent search engine becomes publishing of a copyrighted material? (torrent search engine shows links to a link to a "link" to a material)
  - adamjb 4y ago
    The laws in Australia refer to "facilitating" copyright infringement. Whether or not a torrent website is a publisher is entirely immaterial
    - d0mine 4y ago
      By this logic, google "facilitates" the defamation by providing hyperlinks to the article. The court disagrees.
      - denton-scratch 4y ago
        "Facilitating" defamation isn't defamation, so not a crime. Facilitating copyright infringement is explicitly prohibited, whatever the definition of "publish" is.
        d0mine 4y ago
        This is absurd. Where does it end? iphone allows to watch copyrighted material. Should apple be responsible for any infringement?
        denton-scratch 4y ago

I wonder how this would impact a torrent search engine hosted in Australia

tobyjsullivan 4y ago

Would that be more akin to facilitating a crime? (I don't know anything about law - and even less about Aussie law)

politician 4y ago
It’s interesting, right? I’ll bet it depends on the relative wealth of the parties.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  > I’ll bet it depends on the relative wealth of the parties. Sure, in the same way that the outcome of an election depends on the relative amount of campaign spending by each side. This is an example of a belief that is extremely common despite the fact that there is a mountain of evidence contradicting it and almost nothing in support.
  - chid 4y ago
    I'm not sure what you mean by a mount of evidence contradicting? https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/money-and-elections-a-complicated-love-story/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/money-and-elections-a-c... Obviously it's not going to be 100% success... but are you saying that marketing doesn't work?
    - ask_b123 4y ago
      > Turns out, advertising, the main thing campaigns spend their money on, doesn’t work all that well. But > unlike in the general election, early fundraising strongly predicted who would win primary races.
    - thaumasiotes 4y ago
      > I'm not sure what you mean by a mount[ain] of evidence contradicting? > https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/money-and-elections-a-complicated-love-story/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/money-and-elections-a-c... Your own link is fairly explicit about this: > “I think where you have to change your thinking is that money causes winning,” said Richard Lau, professor of political science at Rutgers. “I think it’s more that winning attracts money.” > decades of research suggest that money probably isn’t the deciding factor in who wins a general election, and especially not for incumbents. > Most of the research on this was done in the last century, Bonica told me, and it generally found that spending didn’t affect wins for incumbents and that the impact for challengers was unclear. > the strong raw association between raising the most cash and winning probably has more to do with big donors who can tell (based on polls or knowledge of the district or just gut-feeling woo-woo magic) that one candidate is more likely to win — and then they give that person all their money. > 80 to 90 percent of congressional races have outcomes that are effectively predetermined by the district’s partisan makeup — and the people that win those elections are still given (and then must spend) ridiculous sums of money because, again, big donors like to curry favor with candidates they know are a sure thing.
  - brigandish 4y ago
    In the UK one of the two wealthiest parties always wins. Strangely enough, they've set up party financing and spending rules to suit themselves.
  - th1s1sit 4y ago
    Why would you try and find physical evidence of a mental hallucination except brain activity? Capitalism does not “actually exist”. It’s learned constraints on agency. I can’t just walk into Musks house and eat his food. I can’t walk into Tesla and alter products due to my meat bag not being referred to as billionaire Elon Musk. How much more evidence story mode still runs the world do you need?
  - politician 4y ago
    Partiality in law is clear and the evidence is overwhelming. Poor defendants lose while wealthy defendants can drag out the process indefinitely. Wealthy plaintiffs can bankrupt individuals trying to defend themselves: the music industry used this strategy during the time of Napster -- feel free to look it up. Impartiality is the hypothetical story we tell ourselves to make us feel good about, for example, Hunter Biden taking selfies with 20g of crack cocaine while black men do 10 years or more for the same crime. There are so many examples that if this one offends your politics, let me know, and I'll provide you with examples that will comport with your preferred media source.
    - thaumasiotes 4y ago
      Problems in the law are clear; partiality less so. Are there more black men who post selfies online with 20g of crack and never get charged for it, or more who go to jail for having 20g of crack? When Hunter Biden gets extra protection from the law, does that source more from his money or from his political status? When Michael Milken got extra persecution from the law, was his wealth an asset or a liability?
      - politician 4y ago
        When high-status individuals get away with well-documented crimes with zero or minimal consequences while low-status individuals are taken to the cleaners by zealous prosecutors eager to pump their conviction rates, the public learns that all men are not equal before the law and that corruption is acceptable to the people that matter. This is well-understood and I’m not breaking any new ground here by saying so. What I am saying that is perhaps offensive or provocative is that this happens in the USA.
        thaumasiotes 4y ago
        Sorry, were we talking about partiality to high-status individuals or partiality to wealthy individuals?
        4y ago

chid 4y ago

I doubt it would 'allow' it, given that the Federal Court has ordered ISP to 'censor' certain torrent websites. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Australia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Austr... It is an interesting point though, it's not publishing but in my limited understand it just means that Google isn't bound by links that it has on its pages.

cmroanirgo 4y ago
As much as I'd like torrents to be more tolerated, there is a difference in that the torrent sites contain the .torrent files which contains all the necessary info to download files. ie, They're supplying more than just a link.
- r3trohack3r 4y ago
  This isn't true for magnet links, which are just hashes that are used as keys in the DHT'S KV store. Example is btdigg which exclusively crawls and indexes magnet links from the DHT
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    There is legally and effectively nothing different about the two. They both give you what you need to get the file. The extra layer of indirection of having to get peers from DHT rather than a tracker doesn't matter.
    - d0mine 4y ago
      Given the topic is the difference between an article and a link to it (one level of indirection), the indirection does matter (at least, if you are google).
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      > They both give you what you need to get the file. I can give you what you need just by telling you to torrent f09c8d0884590088f4004e010a928f8b6178c2fd That's even less than a hyperlink. It would be absolutely ridiculous to say that I'm publishing the torrent.

quickthrower2 4y ago

I guess it means they couldn't be sued for defamation because of the contents of one of the torrents?

cwillu 4y ago
So long as they didn't encourage discussion of the contents of the torrent (paragraph 33) nor enticed the user to choose that torrent over another one (paragraph 51). Or anything else considered in the decision (I'm only a quarter of the way through reading it :p)

ponco 4y ago

It's a defamation case and you will note the main question was whether or not publication occurred. The rules governing dissemination of copyrighted material are completely different.

d0mine 4y ago
if providing a link by google to an article is not publishing then why do you think providing e.g., a hyperlink to a magnet link by a torrent search engine becomes publishing of a copyrighted material? (torrent search engine shows links to a link to a "link" to a material)
- adamjb 4y ago
  The laws in Australia refer to "facilitating" copyright infringement. Whether or not a torrent website is a publisher is entirely immaterial
  - d0mine 4y ago
    By this logic, google "facilitates" the defamation by providing hyperlinks to the article. The court disagrees.
    - denton-scratch 4y ago
      "Facilitating" defamation isn't defamation, so not a crime. Facilitating copyright infringement is explicitly prohibited, whatever the definition of "publish" is.
      - d0mine 4y ago
        This is absurd. Where does it end? iphone allows to watch copyrighted material. Should apple be responsible for any infringement?
        denton-scratch 4y ago