LegalTorrents Launches Copyright-Compliant Tracker

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."

Comments

slashvertisement

[sopssa]

This slashvertisement conveniently left out the fact that
1) You need to add the hash via their website, which for you need a member account and
2) Member accounts start at $20 an year up to $399 an year

While the trackers itself are "open", as in everyone can get the peers via them, you need to add the hash first for it to function. So no, this isn't open tracker.

Re:slashvertisement

[drDugan]

Actually, this is not accurate, the trackers are open, and can be used without adding the hash to the website. Unfortunately, a completely open system is open to abuse, copyright infringement, and other issues.

To publish your own content, or content you have a license to distribute, membership is required to "whitelist" content, and prevent automatic removal by blacklisting. This is the solution we have come up with to minimize and prevent abuse.

Any logged in user can flag content as copyright infringing, here
http://www.legaltorrents.com/flag_content
and unless that hash value is in the whitelist (added by a member), the tracker will remove it in about 15 minutes.

Re:slashvertisement

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the solution we have come up with to minimize and prevent abuse.

Is that to imply you are involved with this service (beyond member that is)?
I had a question that doesn't appear in the FAQ

Plenty of places state how the site will respond to a member that uploads someone elses content, and a very partial description of how DMCA requests are handled - but only from the assuming I am a criminal view.

If I was to become a member, and publish my own works where I have the copyright on that work, how do you defend MY rights against DMCA notices?

To actually qualify for safe harbor provisions, the site is required by law to notify me of a take down notice, and upon my reply that I do in fact own the copyright, are required by law to put that content back up (and provide the entity sending the takedown with my contact info)

Does the site do this? Am I as a rights holder going to still be treated like a criminal when some fool sends an illegal takedown notice to you? Will the site follow the law and inform me?
Will I be compensated if this does not happen, out side of me having to press charges for damages in civil court? (If you do not notify me, you do not qualify for safe harbor, and my own lawsuit will almost certainly win, and odds are the fool sending the takedown can sue you successfully too)

The FAQ states so many places how the rights of IP-thieves (IE RIAA and co) are protected, and not a single mention of how real IP holders rights are protected if at all.

Just curious...

Re:slashvertisement

[drDugan]

There are several steps to qualify for safe harbors, and we will follow each of them to the letter. We have not yet had to reply to any DMCA takedowns yet - all the content on the website must have a share-friendly license before content can be uploaded.

In such a situation, we will both defend the rights of our customers and provide them all the information possible to resolve the issue. I disagree the FAQ is slanted toward "IP-thieves". This does not represent the ethos of LegalTorrents.

Fred von Lohmann from the EFF provides an excellent .pdf review for service providers; there is a recently updated version here:
http://www.law.depaul.edu/centers_institutes/ciplit/niro_symposium_09/pdf/paper_cohn1.pdf
plus EFF has a wiki page with additional details: http://ilt.eff.org/index.php/Copyright:_Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act

Legal Torrents

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Torrents that have been approved by your masters, is more like it.

Re:Legal torrents

[greensoap]

I don't know the figures, but I would venture to guess that AT&T and Comcast are the two largest ISP's providing DSL and Cable (at least in California). Neither of them block bittorrent, maybe its time to get a new ISP. You know, one that doesn't block legitimate file transfer protocols.

Re:Still, it validates the technology

[Interoperable]

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.

Really?

[jeffasselin]

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.

Re:Still, it validates the technology

[MBCook]

I'd think the use of BitTorrent for things like World of Warcraft updates, for about 5 years, is more validation than someone hosting a pay-to-join tracker for legal content.

Aren't there already totally free trackers for legal content (like Linux ISOs, etc)?

Hashing

[b1ng0]

Their SHA1 hashing method will not be sufficient to detect most copyright infringements. Even one bit change in a file will result in a completely different SHA1 hash. I am the creator of pHash, which is well suited for this type of similarity search. The hashes do not need to be identical in order to detect duplicate or similar files, and similar files will have hashes that are "close" to one another. This is really what they should be using.

Re:Still, it validates the technology

[Hobophile]

Exactly, a site and set of trackers dedicated to legal material will facilitate the argument that there are, in fact, legal uses for torrents.

The name of this particular service - LegalTorrents.com - serves to focus undue attention on the ubiquity of torrents providing access to infringing content.

Moreover, it comes down squarely on the wrong side of an important issue: torrents themselves are arguably never illegal, in that they only provide a means of finding content, and leave the actual distribution up to participating clients. Google indexes plenty of content that is either illegal or infringing, and though they deal with plenty of copyright-related complaints, they have not seen the need to establish an explicitly "legal" search service.

The company would also do a tremendous disservice to those advocating legitimate uses of torrents, if the number of torrents it tracks becomes a convenient shorthand for the number of legal torrents available. It might be good for business to publicize those numbers, to the extent they aren't readily visible, even if it is very bad for other legitimate users of the protocol. For instance, it would be trivial to assert that only 5% of torrents are available through LegalTorrents.com, and to imply that the other 95% are somehow illegal or questionable.

Frankly, it would be better for everyone if they had simply picked a name they could brand and advertise effectively. I can't see "LegalTorrents.com" getting the same sort of traction with Fortune 100 businesses as Akamai has, and it draws an inordinate amount of attention to the fact that the legality of the underlying protocol is controversial.

Re:Still, it validates the technology

[JesseMcDonald]

If torrent files are derivative works because they contain hashes of other works, then any work with a bibliography is a derivative of the works it references. Hashes merely identify the a work; they aren't a copy of it.

Moreover, to the best of my knowledge as a non-lawyer, if something wouldn't qualify for copyright on its own (and thus isn't a work at all) then it can't be a derivative work. Hashes certainly wouldn't qualify by themselves, and it's rather unlikely that any torrent file containing them would either.

The "aiding and abetting" argument would indeed be the most sound approach. To that end—if you wish to support copyright—then once the copyright holder has established in court that a given swarm (identified by hash) is infringing on their copyrights, or the court has granted them an injunction pending a final decision, then you should blacklist that particular hash. However, allowing the swarm to continue when its illegality has not been established in a court of law should never be considered "aiding and abetting", since the tracker doesn't have "knowledge that one of their torrents is being used to facilitate copyright infringement"; they only have the copyright holder's allegations to that effect.