Torrentspy Disables Searching For US IPs

dr_strang writes "Torrent indexing site Torrentspy.com appears to have disabled torrent searches for IPs that originate in the United States. Instead of a results page, users are directed to this page, which states: 'Torrentspy Acts to Protect Privacy. Sorry, but because you are located in the USA you cannot use the search features of the Torrentspy.com website. Torrentspy's decision to stop accepting US visitors was NOT compelled by any Court but rather an uncertain legal climate in the US regarding user privacy and an apparent tension between US and European Union privacy laws."

Comments

tor

[wpegden]

Did someone say tor?

In other news..

[micksam7]

Non-US proxy usage skyrockets globally.

Re:The Obvious Reason

[kebes]

You bring up a very valid point, what we have here is reverse censorship. Because of the freedoms (freedom to sue for losses) offered in the US, these restrictions are imposed.

What? "Freedom to sue for losses" ? And does equal rights decrease freeom because landowners no longer have "the Freedom to own slaves" ? How do you reconcile "freedom of speech" against the "freedom to censor" ?

Get real. Just because you add the word "freedom" to the start of a sentence doesn't mean you are describing a real freedom. US users are not being blocked because the US is "too free." They are being blocked because US laws meant to protect copyright holders may require logging and disclosure of logs. This is in conflict with privacy policies.

There is a disagreement here about what "rights" are more important (ease of tracking legal violators vs. privacy). To characterize US laws in this instance as being about "freedom" is disingenuous.

Re:Time for wiki-torrent

[dslauson]

Someone create a privatized wiki-torrent where people can put up their own torrents. That way you can never be sued cause you're not responsible for the contents.

Ummm, there's really no such thing as "can never be sued because of". In the U.S., anybody can sue anybody for anything. Sure, maybe a case will hold no water and will get thrown right out of court, but you'd still probably have a pretty damn good lawyer on retainer before you try something like this in the States, because somehow I don't see the **AA saying, "Oh, well. The guy's got a Wiki. There's nothing we can do."

Re:The Obvious Reason

[capnchicken]

The Congress shall have Power . . . To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Author and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; The pretense of this right is to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts not to protect a failed and obsolete business model.

Re:This is a good thing.

[pla]

Do you get several failed requests before a successful one? The tor exit node would have to be outside the US, so I imagine there must be many failed queries for every success.

Thanks to a cultural obsession with (fighting) child porn in the US, I would expect just the opposite - No sane American would allow exit connections unless they had high enough 3rd party traffic to claim basically no control over or knowledge of the vast majority of the content (ie, an ISP, and they rarely give anything away).

And if the real feds don't ruin you, Dateline will, regardless of the actual facts. I can just about hear the announcement: "Up next, the newest threat to your children: We put 250 megs of fake child porn on a website, and found we could retrieve it anonymously with a new program for terrorists called Tor. We've hunted down, had fired, and forwarded evidence to the DA about the beast running this smut ring, known perversely as 'Exit Node'.

Re:Tor:Popularity Games.

[computational super]

If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear

Buildings with security guards are rarely robbed or broken into. A naive building owner may say, "you know, there haven't been any break-ins in years - I'm wasting my money paying the security guards to guard this place!" when in fact it was the deterrent of the security guard that prevented the break-in in the first place. Civil liberties (such as privacy safeguards) are a bit like security guards - the fact that you have them means you probably don't need them, but if you get rid of them, you'll want them back in a big hurry.