LegalTorrents Launches Copyright-Compliant Tracker 113
drDugan writes "Many legitimate media providers are using Bittorrent to distribute content, but the recent Pirate Bay legal verdict and closures left many content downloads unavailable. Along with the ongoing legal issues at Mininova and other sites, options have been scarce for legitimate Bittorrent tracking service. Once a torrent is created with a tracker URL, that tracker has to stay running for normal distribution to continue. LegalTorrents.com has quietly launched a solution with three open Bittorent trackers for its members, including a fully automated, community-based flagging system to blacklist and immediately remove copyright-infringing content. Users submit SHA1 hash values for content with infringing materials. Site members can include and track their own published materials regardless of flagging."
Legal Torrents (Score:3, Insightful)
Torrents that have been approved by your masters, is more like it.
Re:Still, it validates the technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly, a site and set of trackers dedicated to legal material will facilitate the argument that there are, in fact, legal uses for torrents. This fact is utterly lost on many legislators thanks to the lobbying of Big Content. They need all the help they can get to see beyond the lobbyists and this is a step in the right direction. If the LegalTorrents community can demonstrate that a community can self-regulate to avoid infringement it will make the arguments of the RIAA more transparently false.
Big Content will eventually die off simply because they aren't needed anymore. Artists no longer need big labels to publish their content and the more tools that artists have to avoid Big Content the better.
Re:Legal torrents (Score:3, Insightful)
Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Which version of copyrights? The MPAA and the RIAA where fair use doesn't exist? The US one where anti-circumvention tools are legal? The German version where hacking tools are illegal? Or the Canadian version where fair use and privacy actually matter ('till ACTA is signed and forces us to change our laws, at least)? Something might be legal in one situation and not in another. In the end, only the proper authorities and legal system (aka the courts and judges in most countries) of the users can fairly decide what is legal and what isn't.
And this "community-driven" system for black-flagging "illegal" content looks rife for exploitation.
Hashing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Still, it validates the technology (Score:3, Insightful)
Torrents themselves do not infringe copyrights.
They might however be unauthorized derived works of the material whose hashes they contain.
For sure though once a tracker has knowledge that one of their torrents is being used to facilitate copyright infringement they become an accessory if they fail to remove it.
Copyright infringment is BS. Aiding and abetting, however, I'd be more apt to buy.
Re:Still, it validates the technology (Score:3, Insightful)
and yet you're the only one who is making such an absurd and asinine claim.
Really?
In a lawsuit filed in August 2009, BREIN [wikipedia.org] claimed that "80 to 90 percent of all torrents... [link] to copyrighted material." (citation [pcmag.com])
All that remains is to take the number of torrents on LegalTorrents.com, estimate the number of torrents available through other sites, compare the two numbers, then revise upward the estimate of illegal torrents.
Absurd and asinine it may be, but such claims are already being made.
Admittedly, it's overstating the importance of LegalTorrents.com by quite a lot. This is a site that has tried and failed to reinvent itself a number of times over the last six years, and seems destined to fail again.
But in response to the claim that it will someday support the argument that torrents have substantially non-infringing uses, it's fair to point out that it is far more likely to damage such arguments.
Re:Who cares? (Score:3, Insightful)