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by gressquel 3016 days ago
Don't wanna sound like a party pooper. But isnt this the same as what movie streaming sites are shut down for, linking to sites with copyrighted material?

For information: I love to download or stream movies and tv-series.

3 comments

Don't think so, as these are the exact same links as on Wikidata (and, hopefully, Wikipedia).

I think the difference is between linking to material directly, and to such a website. For example, I don't think linking to the Pirate Bay is prohibited.

Torrentz was a torrent aggregator that got shutdown. It only linked to other torrent sites. It never had any magnet links or torrent files.
Did it not also search those sites and link directly to the search results page?

I'm also not quite sure how it got taken down. I'm currently not convinced that this site nor Wikipedia are illegal for linking to these domains. If someone can either convince Wikipedia to remove those links, or make a strong case for why this is different than Wikipedia linking, I guess I'll have to take it down, yes.

Why is Torrentz choosing to shut down relevant?
Is this the part where a bunch of non-lawyers incorrect each other about the law?
If the link were directly to specific pirated content perhaps, but it's not, it's to the homepage.
Is HN now illegal then?
If a DMCA takedown notice is sent to which HN is not complying, then yes.
Ignoring a DMCA takedown isn't illegal, you just potentially lose the "Safe Harbor" protection if someone does decide to sue you.
I think this is a really good question.

How is this any different than posting a piratebay URL for a pirated movie on HN?

There's a difference between the page for a pirated movie and the front page of TPB.

Where things really get interesting is info hashes. I could right now post a 160 bit SHA1 hash of any content on the bittorrent DHT and you could obtain it simply by tacking "magnet:?xt=urn:btih:" on the front. So perhaps simply sharing the hash of pirated content with some sort of encouragement could be enough to land you in hot water.

> How is this any different than posting a piratebay URL for a pirated movie on HN?

It's a link to a site that links to the front page of SciHub, not a particular paper accessed through it.

What would a magnet link be considered?
A link directly to content, I presume.
One of my projects is to serve torrent magnet links as DNS TXT records. Will be interesting to find out what happens.
It's not different. As in: both are fine. It's not a crime to link to a site that links to content; TPB itself hosts no content. Linking is not a crime.

https://thepiratebay.org

Then why is thepiratebay blocked at the ISP DNS level by a court order in the UK?
Same reason such thing as a TV license exists.