
RIAA to .ORG Registry: Take down ThePirateBay - StuntPope
http://blog.easydns.org/2016/06/06/riaa-to-org-registry-take-down-thepiratebay/
======
JohnLeTigre
If their argument holds in court, wouldn't this mean that they could go after
Google too, on the premise that if you add "Torrent" to your search request,
it directs you to illegal content and that (according to their skewed logic)
this would imply that Google "contains or promotes" illegal material/activity.

The internet contains and promotes everything.

~~~
hasenj
Google does comply with DMCA.

Google is not setup explicitly for the purpose of finding pirated material.

The pirate bay is. And it's pretty obvious from the name too.

I don't see how their logic is "skewed".

~~~
dragandj
How do you mean The Pirate Bay is set up explicitly for finding pirated
material? Where does that come from? They are set up for finding torrents.
Torrents can be and often are completely legitimate. Sometimes they contain
pirated material, but even that material is never in contact with TPB site.

About the name: Yes, it contains the word "Pirate". It doesn't mean that the
actual pirates are there. Also, Amazon is a legitimate online store, not a
river with a surrounding jungle. Kayak does not sell kayaks, and Apple is not
about apples at all.

~~~
hasenj
Don't talk to me in legalese. I'm not a judge nor a lawyer. I'm not a
policeman or a law enforcement agent of any type.

We all know what TPB is for.

~~~
Retr0spectrum
We all know. However, this is a legal issue. To my knowledge, TPB has never
explicitly stated an illegal intent.

Google indexes both legal and illegal content, and the same goes for TPB. Some
examples:

Legal:
[https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/14396611/ubuntu-16.04-deskt...](https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/14396611/ubuntu-16.04-desktop-
amd64.iso)

Illegal:
[https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=game+of+thrones+s06e07+goo...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=game+of+thrones+s06e07+google+docs&oq=game+of+thrones+s06e07+google+docs)

Illegal:
[https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=1080p+google+docs](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=1080p+google+docs)

~~~
ikeboy
>Google indexes both legal and illegal content, and the same goes for TPB.

The difference is that the DMCA says it's okay _as long as you take it down
when you get a DMCA notice_ , which Google, but not TPB, does.

~~~
hansjorg
Without taking sides regarding the original issue, it's incredible how many
people consider US law as universal law without any further thought.

~~~
ikeboy
When TPB claims to be DMCA-compliant, that's what we're judging them on.

~~~
abritinthebay
Given that TPB doesn't actually host any content that _could_ be taken down by
a DMCA notice - they _are_ DMCA compliant.

Their response to "take down links to this hash" is "you don't own that hash"
which is true.

~~~
ikeboy
>Given that TPB doesn't actually host any content that could be taken down by
a DMCA notice

Which has not been established by any precedent yet, as far as I've been able
to tell.

>Their response to "take down links to this hash" is "you don't own that hash"
which is true.

That's not the responses they've given before. (see
[http://beebulletin.com/hilarious-pirate-bay-legal-
responses/](http://beebulletin.com/hilarious-pirate-bay-legal-responses/))

~~~
abritinthebay
The legal precedent is the DMCA itself - it can't be used against things the
person doesn't have copyright over. It's quite specific actually.

Those hashes are not what they have ownership of.

Now if you meant hat they want to _expand_ that law... well yes, but that's
different.

~~~
ikeboy
Claiming that your untested interpretation of the law says something does not
make precedent. This particular argument hasn't yet made it to court, but
torrent cases have, and torrents are basically just more detailed hashes of
each section of a file. Your argument would imply that torrent files are also
legal, and yet Isohunt and others have lost in court over them.

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kyledrake
The general legal precedent here as I see it is that domain registrars are
generally not liable for content hosted on domains they sell, nor are they
responsible for enforcing them. They usually will cooperate to take down sites
if they are obvious phishing attacks, or if there is a court order, but abuse
management through this channel is very rare.

More often than that, they refer any reports to the owner of the IP address
the domain is pointing to. The "entry point" for almost all abuse
(DMCA/phishing/whatever) reporting is whomever holds the abuse contact for the
owner of the IP addresses. They simply do a lookup on the IPs with ARIN (or
APNIC or RIPE depending on where the IPs are managed), and then email that
abuse contact.

We've had plenty of issues with this approach, now that Neocities hosts a lot
of sites. I've recently acquired an IP block largely for the purpose of having
control over this abuse contact, so that we can directly receive abuse emails.
Some providers also do SWIP, which allows you to be the contact for a specific
IP address in their block, but not all providers will do this (Ramnode does -
DigitalOcean does not. I don't think Google Cloud or AWS do this either, but
let me know if they do). Bigger organizations that need this level of control
go this route - you'll note that even companies like Uber use their own IP
addresses instead of throwing it up on a cloud providers'.

If you're planning to host a lot of user submitted web sites or content, this
isn't the easiest/cheapest route, but it's the route you want to seek. I'm
available for consulting on this if you'd like to pursue this for your
organization, I've become quite the expert on the topic out of necessity. :)

~~~
cft
FIY: at some point we owned a /22, but it was statically routed to us by our
upstream ISPs. They would send sometime bogus DMCA noticed to our ISPs (they
did not even bother sending them to us, since they knew the notices were
defective- they were looking for an easy target). Only when we became our own
ISP and started BGP routing with our upstream, they we actually got a handle
of our abuse contact. This is necessary for any site with a lot of user
generated content these days. So now they are fishing for a new easy target-
the registrars.

------
ikeboy
>TPB is DMCA compliant

I thought they explicitly weren't. See [http://beebulletin.com/hilarious-
pirate-bay-legal-responses/](http://beebulletin.com/hilarious-pirate-bay-
legal-responses/), or [https://torrentfreak.com/completely-ignoring-the-dmca-
an-opt...](https://torrentfreak.com/completely-ignoring-the-dmca-an-option-
for-torrent-sites-160131/) (from earlier this year) "The Pirate Bay has
refused to take anything down on copyright grounds from day one and yet it
remains up today."

Is there any other indication that TPB has begun obeying DMCA requests, or are
they lying?

~~~
JoshTriplett
Compliance with the DMCA requires removal of infringing content. TPB does not
host infringing content. Thus, they're vacuously compliant.

~~~
techthroway443
How is hosting magnet links that let you download copyrighted material not
considered hosting infringing content?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Google host entire books that are still known to be in copyright without
getting the author's permission; that doesn't according to the courts count as
copyright infringement. But we're expected to think that hosting content
metadata is [contributory] copyright infringement?

Gun manufacturers are murderers in such a world.

~~~
yammajr
Just to play devil's advocate, gun sales are regulated in one way or another
in many places. Permits, background checks, waiting periods. The pirate bay,
in many ways, acts more like a gun runner than a gun manufacturer. They don't
create the content, they just make it available and try to skirt regulation
through a technicality or even direct non-compliance.

~~~
devdas
So like the HN darling Uber?

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icebraining
For those who haven't seen them (I don't know when it was taken down), TPB
used to have a quite funny list of legal demands and their replies:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20110709061457/http://thepirateb...](https://web.archive.org/web/20110709061457/http://thepiratebay.org/legal)

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vbezhenar
Just bookmark [http://uj3wazyk5u4hnvtk.onion](http://uj3wazyk5u4hnvtk.onion)
and don't care about it.

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sklogic
Time to take down RIAA.

~~~
benmcnelly
That's a terrible plan, or at the least something you shouldn't post online.

~~~
sklogic
There must be a lot of entirely legal means of doing so. They overreached
their authority enough for a proper punishment.

~~~
benmcnelly
I should have put a winky face beside it indicate I was being coy not serious.
I think all comments are interpreted to be super serious. I almost made a
comment about just saying something like that putting you on their "list", but
I am sure that's silly, they probably don't have lists.

;-)

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gcb0
moving my business to easydns!

~~~
donarb
Really? Did you read the whole article?

"We aren't talking wikileaks here, this isn't a free speech or a
whistelblowing issue, it's a due process issue. Bittorrent sites expecting
some kind of safe refuge on easyDNS believing we would approach the situations
they get us into under the former would be severely mistaken."

~~~
JoshTriplett
That's an entirely reasonable response. They allowed TPB because TPB very
specifically noted how they maintain compliance with easyDNS's policies. They
wouldn't necessarily support an arbitrary torrent provider on principle.

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brighton36
It's probable that this is a good use for the Bitcoin blockchain. Uncensorable
DNS. I don't think many sites need that, but it's probably a good thing to
have as a browser extension for those that do

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tkubacki
Always admire 'go f#=%# yourself' statement expressed in a polite way

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dreamdu5t
Google is worse than the pirate bay considering they _profit_ from pirated
material.

~~~
kingnothing
TPB has ads. They profit plenty as well.

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emortallj
Well put, and fully agree! Thanks for stating this so clearly.

