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A comment on Apple and Facebook helped bust the world's biggest torrent site. Parent comment

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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