Apple and Facebook helped bust the world's biggest torrent site

Re:Apple and Facebook helped bust the world's biggest torren... by ungzd on Friday July 22, 2016 @07:42AM (#12142970)

Creating database of music and movies metadata (titles, descriptions, song names, file checksums) is treated like terrorism in todays world. The only difference of Wikipedia is that it doesn't contain that checksums. So seems that these checksums are something like plutonium so even Homeland Security is fighting against it. And every country in the world agrees to send any its citizen to american jail for torture for just hosting these checksums. We're living in medieval times.

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Re:Apple and Facebook helped bust the world's biggest torren... by mtgx on Friday July 22, 2016 @07:59AM (#12143022)

This is why corruption/politicians being bought by corporations is such a big deal, that affects everyone and everything. Lessig is right when he says it's the "root cause" of all the big problems in the U.S. It's not just a "single issue," as Hillary Clinton, likely the next president of the U.S., and who has also benefited greatly from this type of corruption, said during the Democratic Primary (as an "attack" against Sanders) - it's all the issues.

Think coal/oil lobby influencing/delaying climate change strategies , military industrial complex influencing national security strategies for more wars (and thus spreading terrorism and making Americans less secure), and even the copyright lobby buying politicians to pass laws that make it a crime to tinker with your device, or make people pay $150,000 for copying a song, and so on.

The U.S. really needs to figure out how to get this corrupting influence out of politics, or it's only going to get worse for its citizens, as even more special interests try to screw people over, or they get even more aggressive and shameless about it.

This graph shouldn't be a thing anymore:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig

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Re:Apple and Facebook helped bust the world's biggest torren... by simbalion on Friday July 22, 2016 @09:18AM (#12143305)

Corruption is a problem in every nation. Has any country found a way to curb it yet? I dont know of any examples, but everyone knows dozens of examples of countries whose governments were bought and sold years ago.

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Re:Apple and Facebook helped bust the world's biggest torren... by amelius on Friday July 22, 2016 @08:35AM (#12143149)

Perhaps you should try to find an answer to the question why a checksum should be considered fair use. Fair use for a movie typically only covers short fragments, not (data computed from) the entire length of the movie.

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Re:Apple and Facebook helped bust the world's biggest torren... by Jtsummers on Friday July 22, 2016 @09:13AM (#12143282)

> not (data computed from) the entire length of the movie.

I guess we shouldn't publish the running time of movies either.

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Re:Apple and Facebook helped bust the world's biggest torren... by jsprogrammer on Friday July 22, 2016 @09:06AM (#12143258)

A checksum is an integer. Stating an integer is fair.

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Re:Apple and Facebook helped bust the world's biggest torren... by amelius on Friday July 22, 2016 @09:08AM (#12143262)

An entire movie can also be represented as an integer.

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Re:Apple and Facebook helped bust the world's biggest torren... by threatofrain on Friday July 22, 2016 @10:34AM (#12143740)

All information can be represented by integers, or any sequence of symbols, but in this case, a checksum is the equivalent of a name or title -- something only to identify.

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Re:Apple and Facebook helped bust the world's biggest torren... by amelius on Friday July 22, 2016 @11:48AM (#12144246)

> ... something only to identify

Well in this case, the checksum is used "only" to spread illegal copies.

Not sure why else people would want a checksum and store it in a database.

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Re:Apple and Facebook helped bust the world's biggest torren... by threatofrain on Friday July 22, 2016 @12:44PM (#12144726)

In the same sense that names and titles can also be used to spread illegal copies, but by themselves they are innocuous.

Banning safe behavior to stop bad behavior is negligent policy work. Failure to constrain the effects of policy to its intended target is why people get scared about making videos on repairing Apple products.

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Re:Apple and Facebook helped bust the world's biggest torren... by Redoubts on Friday July 22, 2016 @09:41AM (#12143415)

It can be identified by it, but you can't reproduce it from the number anymore than you could from the title alone.

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Re:Apple and Facebook helped bust the world's biggest torren... by Jtsummers on Friday July 22, 2016 @09:43AM (#12143421)

Actually, a movie could be represented by a fairly large (infinite even) number of integers that could allow you to fully reproduce or render it. Checksums, however, are merely digital equivalents to titles or other identifiers. They let you know identity, but not content.

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Re:Apple and Facebook helped bust the world's biggest torren... by imaginenore on Friday July 22, 2016 @08:08AM (#12143054)

> The only difference of Wikipedia is that it doesn't contain that checksums

That's false. A typical magnet link looks like this:

    magnet:?xt=urn:btih:264886d841442158b3efc861bbfca5ef91d8f68b&dn=
    Mr.Robot.S02E01.720p.WEBRip.AAC2.0.H.264-KNiTTiNG%5Bettv%5D&tr=u
    dp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.leechers-paradise.org%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fz
    er0day.ch%3A1337&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopen.demonii.com%3A1337&tr=udp%3
    A%2F%2Ftracker.coppersurfer.tk%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fexodus.desy
    nc.com%3A6969

Notice all the tracker URLs.

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Re:Apple and Facebook helped bust the world's biggest torren... by Retr0spectrum on Friday July 22, 2016 @08:21AM (#12143095)

Most torrent clients will work fine if you just give them the hash.

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Re:Apple and Facebook helped bust the world's biggest torren... by imaginenore on Friday July 22, 2016 @11:08AM (#12143977)

Yes, but that's not my point. My point is these torrent sites have links, not just hashes.

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Re:Apple and Facebook helped bust the world's biggest torren... by simbalion on Friday July 22, 2016 @09:19AM (#12143310)

You can't be arrested for telling someone the street address of a crack house. Why is this different?

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Re:Apple and Facebook helped bust the world's biggest torren... by jpgvm on Friday July 22, 2016 @09:21AM (#12143320)

If your client is DHT enabled you often don't need the tracker list, just the content hash is sufficient.

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Re:Apple and Facebook helped bust the world's biggest torren... by nxzero on Friday July 22, 2016 @08:26AM (#12143114)

The "btih" value is the checksum.

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Re:Apple and Facebook helped bust the world's biggest torren... by urbanarson on Friday July 22, 2016 @08:15AM (#12143078)

Well look who's pirating now. Maybe someone should throw you in jail.

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