That would be news to me. More likely, they're just going with a conspiracy argument (and indeed he is charged with conspiracy): he didn't actually commit copyright infringement himself, but aided others in doing so. Even then, conspiracy laws have very specific requirements for conviction, and this may not check all the boxes. It will be interesting to see.

There is a very improbable risk of hash collision for two different original works, so… no, they aren’t?

Interesting (and somewhat very worrying) proposal, however.