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> The equivalent would be a site that contains an ID for illegal drugs, and when you click the link it connects to a pharmaceutical 3D printer that instantly constructs the drug from raw materials in violation of narcotics law.

And the user had to previously choose how to route these requests to 3D printers through a completely independent application. The original site itself doesn't make the IDs do anything. By default clicking those magnet links does nothing at all. A UPC code is a good analogy.

So the printer is clearly doing illegal things. But is the original site illegal because a totally different person automated drug-buying? And it's not a pachinko setup either. These are truly independent actors.




"Golly, your honor, I had no idea that magnet links could be clickable and that, if people clicked, they could download the file, thereby facilitating copyright infringement..."

Good luck selling that line of argument. You might have an argument if the protocol actually did trigger off of unlinked UPC codes and sites didn't have to construct special links that conform to a standard (in which case you could download movies by browsing Amazon or IMDB). But if a site publishes magnet links there is no denying knowledge of what those links do. Or I guess you could try to deny but no judge or jury with an IQ over 50 would believe it.


I'm not saying the argument should be ignorance, rather that it should be lack of causality. The user has to specifically configure their system to turn these magnet IDs into a piracy opportunity. Or they have to copy each one into their torrent client of choice. Just like if I review an illegal drug and tell everyone exactly what it is so you can get the right thing from your supplier... I'm still not your supplier, I don't know who you are or where you go to buy such things. I'm not in the drug trade.

I'm sure I can find plenty of 5 star weed reviews that nobody would call illegal, even though they're calling out specific brands in a way that someone could trivially turn into a purchase.


By that line of reasoning you could publish a website with information on hitmen for hire and put their phone number beside each listing. After all it's just a sequence of numbers and the user has to manually call or configure their device to place the phone call.


That's more like a tracker. A closer analogy to magnet links is that I tell you a hashtag that's used by a particular sort of hitman, and you use that to find your own hitmen on the social media site of your choice.


> rather that it should be lack of causality

I don't think causality is the right metric here, rather it's the fact that you're facilitating a criminal act -- you're making it easier for someone to break the law.

The proportional amount by which you facilitate the action ought to matter.

If a drug is going to cost you $50 and all I did was point you in the right direction, you still need to cough up another $50.

But if finding the right link and downloading some tool is all I need to do, then by providing the link you've taken me at least halfway, and maybe more if I already had the tool.


Would that mean the cheaper the drug is, the more proportional responsibility I have for pointing you the way?

Your efficiency tools should not make my actions more illegal.


> _Your_ efficiency tools should not make _my_ actions more illegal.

Why would you expect that to be an invariant in the legal system?

Your actions take place in the context of the world; the context should affect how someone judges your actions.

The key point is whether you personally know (and if the prosecution can show it) that providing a link is tantamount to allowing someone to easily download it.


Context matters, but we should only take links so far. Otherwise we ban all ISPs for facilitating piracy.

They even encourage people going to youtube and watching illegally uploaded videos!


That's why there is explicit safe harbor protection for ISPs.

The safe harbor doesn't come for free, it requires affirmative action on the ISP or Youtube's part to take down content that they know is illegal.

Any hypothetical torrent-sharing site could take advantage of that protection as well, as long as it followed those take-down provisions.


ISPs don't generally have to take down anything, at least not in the US.

Power companies and roads facilitate a whole lot. Zero legal responsibility there. You could make a pretty good argument that a road is responsible for quite a large proportional facilitation when drugs are bought.


Yes, but power companies and roads by and large facilitate legal activity, whereas sharing links to copyrighted content don't.

If you hypothetically ask me to make you a cup of coffee and it helps you stay awake so you can go commit a murder, I shouldn't be going to jail for that, unless my intent was to help you commit murder; and even then, I probably didn't help you very much.

On the other hand, if you come to me and ask me for the number of a local hitman, I should have a pretty good idea that I'm aiding and abetting in something illegal.


I think the problem there is more that you talked to me about finding hitmen, even if I didn't help.

If I merely let you access my directory of all the people in town sorted by job, there probably wouldn't be an issue.

A search engine is not a human. It can't be expected to preemptively filter out suspicious results. Google certainly doesn't.

In the end I just don't think it's right to shut down a site because of its userbase. We don't shut down roads when most of their traffic is criminals. And there's nothing inherently illegal about torrent search engines.


> We don't shut down roads when most of their traffic is criminals

Do you have an example of a road mostly used by criminals which the relevant authorities aren't trying to shut down? One where the criminals aren't actively bribing the authorities, obviously.




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