Hacker News Reader

Comment by crdrost | Hacker News Reader

Because until this thing gets diffused and dissected by everyone and their mothers, the law is likely to view it as publication of confidential trade secrets, and people who can be confirmed to be spreading such things can get federal time, e.g. [1] for example. Using a VPN is the barest of mechanisms to try to obscure your identity to avoid this sort of punishment.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204409004577158...

View on HN

I think there's a big difference between selling chemical secrets to a hostile government and this torrent. Namely, that no one is selling this information, it's available to anyone who can grab a magnet file.

Here is the real thing: are you confident enough in your statement to argue that way when confronted by your government (or whatever is the concerned body here)? If yes, then feel free to do whatever you want with your free time and bandwidth, but otherwise you're better to stay as far as possible from these data.

Right but if you just download without seeding, no crime is being committed, yes?

So seems like the barest you can do is "disable seeding", not "use a VPN".

IANAL and you should probably contact yours about such things but a straightforward reading suggests that because you knew you were downloading something likely illegally gotten, you are in fact on the hook for downloading it.

    “Misappropriation” means: 

      (i) acquisition of a trade secret of another by a person who knows or has
        reason to know that the trade secret was acquired by improper means; or
      (ii) disclosure or use of a trade secret of another without express or
        implied consent by a person who 
        (A) used improper means to acquire knowledge of the trade secret; or 
        (B) at the time of disclosure or use knew or had reason to know that
          his knowledge of the trade secret was 
          (I) derived from or through a person who has utilized improper means 
            to acquire it; 
          (II) acquired under circumstances giving rise to a duty to maintain
            its secrecy or limit its use; or 
          (III) derived from or through a person who owed a duty to the person
            seeking relief to maintain its secrecy or limit its use; or 
        (C) before a material change of his position, knew or had reason to
          know that it was a trade secret and that knowledge of it had been
          acquired by accident or mistake.

Depends heavily on the jurisdiction, I am afraid. This exact case was used as a precedent where I'm from (Czech Republic) that no, merely downloading over BitTorrent still constitutes "sharing copyrighted material".

Presumably that was because BitTorrent sends data even before receiving 100% of it? But I assume that downloading these files would not be allowed in this case anyway as per Zákon č. 121/2000 Sb. §29 (2) since this is not a published work.

Ahem. Not seeding is a crime.

The only place I know where that would be the case is Switzerland, there downloading copyrighted material isn't illegal (and companies aren't allowed to track IPs of people downloading files via torrent), but sharing is. But in the context of a data leak of confidential trade secrets, that's likely to be a completely different situation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com