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Comment by currysausage | Hacker News Reader

Very curious about the legal implications if every site that I visit can transfer files to unknown peers in the background. P2P is, AFAIK, a big source of costly cease-and-desist orders in Germany. With WebTorrent, I guess I could tell the right holder to bring the matter to court and plausibly state that some malicious ad iframe must have distributed that MKV without my knowledge.

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Not just that, but why wouldn't ads start using your bandwith for this sort of thing ? Do you get a legal claim for your bandwith costs (especially on mobile) against the site owner for doing this without your permission ?

Do you get a claim against your browser maker ?

Is there a difference between using bandwidth this way, or loading say 150MB image? (bandwidth costs wise)

I would certainly say yes. They're using your bandwidth to serve another one of their customers, for free, without compensating you in any way.

Whereas loading a 150MB image from their server is using their bandwidth (that they're paying for) to serve you.

Legally, I have no idea. Morally, it'd be nice if they at least asked and actually had a working site if you say "no".

Those cease and desist orders are toothless. You can either ignore them or write them a nice letter that you didn't violate the copyright and don't plan to in the future.

They aren't toothless if the only ISP in your city cuts you off.

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