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Part of me thinks the best way to bring attention to this is to make your search engine and publish it. I don't see how this exposes liability for you—is Googl

Part of me thinks the best way to bring attention to this is to make your search engine and publish it. I don't see how this exposes liability for you—is Google liable when people leave their printer's/router's/fax's/whatever's web configuration interfaces on the public internet with no password? I don't believe they are, and I've seen a number of Google searches in the past on the Hacker News front page linking to pages and pages of them. However, like Google, you probably want to have a quick way for people to remove their site from the index once they've discovered and secured it. I, for one, would love to see a search engine of public rsync servers.

stevekemp 13y ago
You may be on to something; I'm just wary that actually downloading from an unsecured share would be "unauthorized access", and there have been too many cases where linking to torrents is equivalent to performing copyright infringement yourself. (I do own the rsync.io domain, so I have the perfect place to host it ..)
- valarauca1 13y ago
  You have good reason to be afraid too. Remember the Weev case (like him or not) set things in motion. What would likely be best is contacting the owners (of possible). Have a 90 day period where you aren't listed but alerted privately. Then if noncompliance is maintained you to public.
  - stevekemp 13y ago
    Too often though it is hard to determine who to contact - e.g. you have a random IP, you look it up in whois and you find it belongs to a cable-provider. You can't map to that to an individual, unless you mail "abuse@isp" and hope they pass along the message. The alternative is to download all the private data, looking for email addresses and hoping for the best - i.e. They don't send a mail to "abuse@fbi.gov" about a hacker stealing their data and similar.
rlpb 13y ago
The law is not an algorithm that can be applied to tell you whether something is legal or not. Both intent and context come into it heavily. If the majority of rsync shares contain private data, such that your search engine is effectively a private data search engine and can't really be used for anything else without continuously stumbling across more private data, then it could easily be considered radically different from Google's situation.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > The law is not an algorithm that can be applied to tell you whether something is legal or not. That may be true in practice, but that's what the law is supposed to be -- an unambiguous social signaling system, that applies to all persons equally, without vagueness or the possibility of terminological confusion. If a given law can be shown to be vague or confusing, it can be declared unconstitutional. Whether it will be declared unconstitutional depends on whether anyone is willing to fight about it in court. But the principle of public law is -- yes! -- that it is an "algorithm that can be applied to tell you whether something is legal or not." A failure in this role represents a failure in the legal system itself. > Both intent and context come into it heavily. Absolutely false. Someone who breaks the law can't argue that their intent or the context makes any difference. That might affect the punishment, but it doesn't affect the question of guilt.
  - IanCal 13y ago
    > Absolutely false. Someone who breaks the law can't argue that their intent or the context makes any difference. That might affect the punishment, but it doesn't affect the question of guilt. How would you explain the difference between murder and manslaughter then? If someone dies on the operating table because the surgeon accidentally nicks an artery that's different from them actively trying to kill someone. The act is identical, only the intent is different. Intent is, and should be, a deciding factor in whether or not someone is guilty of a crime.
    - lutusp 13y ago
      >How would you explain the difference between murder and manslaughter then? Circumstances, which can only affect the punishment, not the judgment that a crime has taken place. But I already said this.
fragmede 13y ago
> I don't see how this exposes liability for you. Is The Pirate Bay liable when people upload copyright-infringing torrents? Arguably not, but that's not quite how the law sees it.
- __david__ 13y ago
  The Pirate Bay isn't a search engine though. This is much closer to Google than TPB.
  - fragmede 13y ago
    TPB indexes content and gives a link to access the content, same as Google. TPB does not actually host any of the copyright infringing content they link to, same as Google. There is a minor difference in that people upload to TPB and Google spiders out for content but that doesn't seem relevant here.

stevekemp 13y ago

You may be on to something; I'm just wary that actually downloading from an unsecured share would be "unauthorized access", and there have been too many cases where linking to torrents is equivalent to performing copyright infringement yourself. (I do own the rsync.io domain, so I have the perfect place to host it ..)

valarauca1 13y ago
You have good reason to be afraid too. Remember the Weev case (like him or not) set things in motion. What would likely be best is contacting the owners (of possible). Have a 90 day period where you aren't listed but alerted privately. Then if noncompliance is maintained you to public.
- stevekemp 13y ago
  Too often though it is hard to determine who to contact - e.g. you have a random IP, you look it up in whois and you find it belongs to a cable-provider. You can't map to that to an individual, unless you mail "abuse@isp" and hope they pass along the message. The alternative is to download all the private data, looking for email addresses and hoping for the best - i.e. They don't send a mail to "abuse@fbi.gov" about a hacker stealing their data and similar.

rlpb 13y ago

The law is not an algorithm that can be applied to tell you whether something is legal or not. Both intent and context come into it heavily. If the majority of rsync shares contain private data, such that your search engine is effectively a private data search engine and can't really be used for anything else without continuously stumbling across more private data, then it could easily be considered radically different from Google's situation.

lutusp 13y ago
> The law is not an algorithm that can be applied to tell you whether something is legal or not. That may be true in practice, but that's what the law is supposed to be -- an unambiguous social signaling system, that applies to all persons equally, without vagueness or the possibility of terminological confusion. If a given law can be shown to be vague or confusing, it can be declared unconstitutional. Whether it will be declared unconstitutional depends on whether anyone is willing to fight about it in court. But the principle of public law is -- yes! -- that it is an "algorithm that can be applied to tell you whether something is legal or not." A failure in this role represents a failure in the legal system itself. > Both intent and context come into it heavily. Absolutely false. Someone who breaks the law can't argue that their intent or the context makes any difference. That might affect the punishment, but it doesn't affect the question of guilt.
- IanCal 13y ago
  > Absolutely false. Someone who breaks the law can't argue that their intent or the context makes any difference. That might affect the punishment, but it doesn't affect the question of guilt. How would you explain the difference between murder and manslaughter then? If someone dies on the operating table because the surgeon accidentally nicks an artery that's different from them actively trying to kill someone. The act is identical, only the intent is different. Intent is, and should be, a deciding factor in whether or not someone is guilty of a crime.
  - lutusp 13y ago
    >How would you explain the difference between murder and manslaughter then? Circumstances, which can only affect the punishment, not the judgment that a crime has taken place. But I already said this.

fragmede 13y ago

> I don't see how this exposes liability for you. Is The Pirate Bay liable when people upload copyright-infringing torrents? Arguably not, but that's not quite how the law sees it.

__david__ 13y ago
The Pirate Bay isn't a search engine though. This is much closer to Google than TPB.
- fragmede 13y ago
  TPB indexes content and gives a link to access the content, same as Google. TPB does not actually host any of the copyright infringing content they link to, same as Google. There is a minor difference in that people upload to TPB and Google spiders out for content but that doesn't seem relevant here.