> A user would then need to first use the "torrent site" to enter their search terms, and find the hash, then they would need to give the hash to a tracker, which would return the list of peers?
> Is that right?
More or less.
> In any case, each party in the transaction shares liability.
That's exactly right Bob. Just as a telephone exchange shares liability for connecting drug sellers to drug buyers when given a phone number.
Clearly the telephone exchange should know by the number that the parties intend to discuss sharing child pornography rather than public access to free to air documentaries.
How do you propose that a telephone exchange vet phone numbers to ensure drugs are not discussed?
Bear in mind that in the case of a tracker the 'call' is NOT routed through the exchange.
With a proper telephone exchange the call data (voices) pass through the exchange equipment, with a tracker no actual file content passes through the trackers hardware.
The tracker, given a number, tells interested parties about each other .. they then talk directly to each other; be it about The Sky at Night -s2024e07- 2024-10-07 Question Time or about Debbie Does Donkeys.
Also keep in mind that trackers juggle a vast volume of connections of which a very small amount would be (say) child abuse related.
I'll restate the principle of good usage to bad usage ratio, telephone providers are a well established service with millions of legitimate users and uses. Furthermore they are a recognized service in law, they are regulated, and they can comply with law enforcement.
They are closer to the ISP, which according to my theory has some liability as well.
It's just a matter of the liability being small and the service to society being useful and necessary.
To take a spin to a similar but newer tech, consider crypto. My position is that its legality and liability for illegal usage of users (considering that of exchanges and online wallets, since the network is often not a legal entity) will depend on the ratio of legitimate to ilegitimate use that will be given to it.
There's definitely a second system effect, were undesirables go to the second system, so it might be a semantical difference unrelated to the technical protocols. Maybe if one system came first, or if by chance it were the most popular, the tables would be turned.
But I feel more strongly that there's design features that make law compliance, traceability and accountability difficult. In the case of trackers perhaps the microservice/object is a simple key-value store, but it is semantically associated with other protocols which have 'noxious' features described above AND are semantically associates with illegal material.
> I'll restate the principle of good usage to bad usage ratio, telephone providers are a well established service with millions of legitimate users and uses
Over 10 million torrents tracked daily, on the order of 300 thousand connections per second, handshaking between some 200 million peers per week.
That's material from the Internet Archive, software releases, pooled filesharing, legitimate content sharing via embedded clients that use torrents to share load, and a lot of TV and movies that have variable copyright status
( One of the largest TV|Movie sharing sites for decades recent closed down after the sole operator stopped bearing the cost and didn't want to take on dubious revenue sources; that was housed in a country that had no copyright agreements with the US or UK and was entirely legal on its home soil.
Another "club" MVGroup only rip documentaries that are "free to air" in the US, the UK, Japan, Australia, etc. and in 20 years of publicaly sharing publicaly funded content haven't had any real issues )
> the ISP, which according to my theory has some liability as well.
The world's a big place.
The US MPA (Motion Picture Association - the big five) backed an Australian mini-me group AFACT (Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft) to establish ISP liability in a G20 country as a beach head bit of legislation.
The alliance of 34 companies unsuccessfully claimed that iiNet authorised primary copyright infringement by failing to take reasonable steps to prevent its customers from downloading and sharing infringing copies of films and television programs using BitTorrent.
That was a three strikes total face plant:
The trial court delivered judgment on 4 February 2010, dismissing the application and awarding costs to iiNet.
An appeal to the Full Court of the Federal Court was dismissed.
A subsequent appeal to the High Court was unanimously dismissed on 20 April 2012.
It set a legal precedent:
This case is important in copyright law of Australia because it tests copyright law changes required in the Australia–United States Free Trade Agreement, and set a precedent for future law suits about the responsibility of Australian Internet service providers with regards to copyright infringement via their services.
It's also now part of Crown Law .. ie. not directly part of the core British Law body, but a recognised bit of Commonwealth High Court Law that can be referenced for consideration in the UK, Canada, etc.
> but it is semantically associated with other protocols which have 'noxious' features described above AND are semantically associates with illegal material.
Gosh, semantics hey. Some people feel in their waters that this is a protocol used by criminals and must therefore by banned or policed into non existance?
> Is that right?
More or less.
> In any case, each party in the transaction shares liability.
That's exactly right Bob. Just as a telephone exchange shares liability for connecting drug sellers to drug buyers when given a phone number.
Clearly the telephone exchange should know by the number that the parties intend to discuss sharing child pornography rather than public access to free to air documentaries.
How do you propose that a telephone exchange vet phone numbers to ensure drugs are not discussed?
Bear in mind that in the case of a tracker the 'call' is NOT routed through the exchange.
With a proper telephone exchange the call data (voices) pass through the exchange equipment, with a tracker no actual file content passes through the trackers hardware.
The tracker, given a number, tells interested parties about each other .. they then talk directly to each other; be it about The Sky at Night -s2024e07- 2024-10-07 Question Time or about Debbie Does Donkeys.
Also keep in mind that trackers juggle a vast volume of connections of which a very small amount would be (say) child abuse related.