

Ask HN: Legality of hosting encrypted files? - jrokisky

Lately I've been thinking about the legal ramifications of hosting encrypted copyrighted data.<p>If person X encrypts a copyrighted file with some algorithm/key, posts this encrypted file on hosting site A, and then shares the algorithm/key what would be the legal ramifications to hosting site A?<p>The hosting site could claim ignorance and saying that they are not hosting copyrighted data. In response the owner of the copyrighted data could show that through a series of transformations the data is the copyrighted data. That being said, can't any data be "transformed" to be that same copyrighted file?<p>Thanks for reading and looking forward to some feedback!
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BrianPetro
Research the way Me.ga is getting around the liability issue. I think it may
be something similar to what you proposed.

<http://mashable.com/category/kim-dotcom/>

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sharth
I would imagine that in the USA, you just follow the DMCA. It doesn't matter
if the file is encrypted or not encrypted, compressed or not compressed.

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jrokisky
But how would it be proven that the file being hosted is the Copyrighted file?
For example, say there are 100 files on a hosting site, and when they are
XORed together they create a copyrighted file. Is this illegal? What about if
there are only 99/100 files? Would it be considered illegal based on intent?

