As someone with no knowledge on the subject, why would accepting payment increase liability? As in, the target of the lawsuit would also be liable for the money they received, or something else?
Most countries have much different penalties for piracy and selling pirated goods.
For example, in Canada, the penalty for non-commercial infringement is generally about 100$, and it can go up to 5000$ maximum (repeat offenders and so on). For commercial infringement, the penalty is of 20 000$.
Furthermore, in Canada, seeding downloaded files via P2P service is of ambiguous legality, with some interpretations saying that as long as you don't advertise or try to share it with as much people as possible (positive action) required to make it illegal. Receiving payment for this would torpedo that defense, which means even higher liability. All in all, it's not a good idea.
It's probably worth noting the horrible privacy characteristics of Ethereum. With the right resources, It's straightforward to track down the identity behind the seeders.
Yeah, this will probably be integrated with AZTEC or some kind of zk scheme before it becomes a full mainnet protocol due to the risky nature of torrents.
I doubt many people have a moral quandary over torrenting. It's like video games with the ease of use of Steam and how game piracy is no longer a big problem since it's easier to just buy them, if there was a simple one-stop shop where I could watch movies and TV shows with one click I would pay for it no problem. I'm not going to pay to jump through hoops and remember 5 different passwords to 5 different services.
This uses state channels for payment which is more secretive than using regular ethereum transactions. To take the cake, the funds can be mixed on tornado.cash or AZTEC or whatever the latest ETH privacy tech is.
For example, in Canada, the penalty for non-commercial infringement is generally about 100$, and it can go up to 5000$ maximum (repeat offenders and so on). For commercial infringement, the penalty is of 20 000$.
Furthermore, in Canada, seeding downloaded files via P2P service is of ambiguous legality, with some interpretations saying that as long as you don't advertise or try to share it with as much people as possible (positive action) required to make it illegal. Receiving payment for this would torpedo that defense, which means even higher liability. All in all, it's not a good idea.