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Comment by Hamuko | Hacker News Reader

>Specifically, at the URL, the Repository hosts and offers for download the Project, which, when downloaded, provides the downloader everything necessary to launch and host a “clone” infringing website identical to Nyaa.si (and, thus, engage in massive infringement of copyrighted motion pictures and television shows).

I'd like for Motion Picture Association to publish a step-by-step guide on how I can engage in massive infringement of copyrighted motion pictures and television shows using this piece of software.

Because I imagine at some point in the guide they'd tell me to generate torrent files of copyrighted files I have and upload them to the site, which is really outside of this project.

Or is Nginx also infringing because when downloaded, it allows me to start engaging in massive infringement of copyrighted motion pictures and television shows by enabling directory indexing and uploading MP4s?

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I was thinking the same until this part:

>> The identified files and code are preconfigured to find and provide infringing copies of our Members’ film and tv content to Nyaa.si users in violation of copyright law.

It's one thing to host software that can be used for this. It's another to host software specifically configured for it. Still might be legal. I wanted to see what the linked configuration files actually contain, but they've been taken down.

It still smacks of going after the tools rather than the infringers.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201105144800/https://codeload....

Have at 'em.

    .docker/es_sync_config.json
    .docker/nyaa-config-partial.py
    config.example.py
    migrations/versions/2bceb2cb4d7c_add_comment_count_to_torrent.py
    nyaa/api_handler.py
    nyaa/static/search-sukebei.xml
    nyaa/templates/home.html
    nyaa/torrents.py
    utils/api_info.py
    utils/api_uploader_v2.py

The smoking gun is right there in config.example.py:

    TRACKER_API_AUTH = 'topsecret'
    TRACKER_API_URL = 'http://127.0.0.1:6881/api'

A smoking gun is just circumstantial evidence.

The real damning thing in that repository are the few lines that play Toy Story 2 if you run them.

How is that a smoking gun?

It connects with a tracker, which might be used to help distribute copyrighted works illegally, but also any other types of files.

It's possible I'm not getting your sarcasm.

It's a sarcastic joke, nothing there but a place holder for your own API key and you would have to set it up. There's no place like 127.0.0.1. :D

Okay this is just getting weird. One of those is just a database update that counts how many comments a torrent has. Another is just some database credentials (probably not the ones you want to use in production, unless you don't mind people knowing your passwords). The HTML template for the home page is also in there for some reason. And then to finish things off they added the OpenSearch definition which I think you can use to add Nyaa/Sukebei as a search engine to your browser.

Really the most suspicious ones are the python scripts in utils, which connect to the api on https://nyaa.si by default. Although those also only seem to allow you to upload torrents (not an infrinfing activity) and download the info of a single entry on nyaa (possibly infringing?).

Also they curiously left out sync_es.py, not that that one does anything too interesting (it synchronizes a elasticsearch database with a MySql database) but it is the script that actually uses those configuration files they picked out.

This is only true if you consider information that can be used to pirate works as "infringing material" that falls under the DMCA (in particular its safe harbour provision).

Which would effectively give any copyright holder carte blanche to censor any information that can be used to infringe their copyright.

But isn't that exactly what's happening here?

Well copyright is, when it comes down to it, not very logical.

In the digital world every picture, video, audio or other copyrighted material is represented as a number, which can pretty much be any number, if the encoding can be freely chosen.

Transferring and storing those numbers (looking at you π) could be a copyright violation or not, pretty much just depending on the intent.

Because proving intent is very difficult, the rules seem to have changed here a bit, so now the defendant would have to prove that they didn't intent to do so... Which might be even more difficult, but who with money and influence cares about that.

Exactly... that was demonstrated with DeCSS and AACS a long time ago, with shirts printed with colors "encoding" the magic number and whatnot.

I would love for someone to actually code this in the "rockstar" language. With sufficient "base" conversions, you could make any program be represented by the constitution.

Speaking of DeCSS: it’s available in haiku form: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS_haiku

I had one of those shirts.

We could distribute pirated movies with pi.

Just publish the digit offset from where to start and how many digits to calculate.

The offset would probably be an infintely huge number, but I wonder if they could technically DMCA you for hosting it.

Of course they could.

> by enabling directory indexing and uploading MP4s?

this shows how the MPAA is a short hop away from saying possessing a DRM-free mp4 is tantamount to intent to infringe on copyright

Copyright advocates in the past have successfully argued that empty CDs are tantamount to copyright infringement. Some countries (Spain) have even had (still does?) a tax on HDDs and SSDs.

You pay extra when purchasing a harddrive, because it's possible to put pirated works on it.

We've already made that hop.

> You pay extra when purchasing a harddrive, because it's possible to put pirated works on it.

Well, if we've already payed for it...

Jokes aside, every time I start feeling vaguely guilty about pirating something (which I only do from large corps, not indies) something like this pops up.

Does admitting such things demonstrate a lack of wisdom? Does copyright infringement monitoring extend to comments on public forums?

Not really. Here, I can publicly say that I've got 12 terabytes of hard drives, about 8 of which are absolutely full of copyrighted content. Games, movies, music, PDFs, software. I even seed quite a bit of it.

Any MPAA representative, or the legal equivalent in my country are invited to get fucked, since they would need access to said hard drives to prove it.

Maybe I'm only kidding. Who knows?

But yes, and probably.

It's not as if it will actually have any consequences.

Not now but in the future it certainly will come back to you.

Germany has that, too. Any USB-Stick, CD, etc. that a normal user can write any data onto.

We do still have, yes. And I'm pretty sure most of Europe, too.

The idea of constructive possession of copyright infringing material is a little hilarious and sad.

> Because I imagine at some point in the guide they'd tell me to generate torrent files of copyrighted files I have and upload them to the site, which is really outside of this project.

One of the files they link to is a utility for uploading torrent files (/utils/api_uploader_v2.py). As far as I can tell, it doesn't generate the torrent files, just uploads them.

Torrent files in general, yes. Torrent files are not, by default, any sort of legal infringement.

I agree. I was pointing that file out because it supports what you were saying.

I wouldn’t go that far. The DMCA mentions “linking”. And while it’s a big stretch to say that a torrent or magnet link is a “link”, they do tell you “how” to find something. If that something is copyrighted, I could see an MPAA lawyer arguing that a torrent “links” to the infringing content. Although, OTOH, if I told a friend to “go to thepiratebay.org and search for $movieName”, it would be harder to prove I’m infringing. It’s a very gray area.

> I have and upload them to the site, which is really outside of this project.

>Or is Nginx also infringing because when downloaded

No, you have to use Google Chrome for this.

This. Google is the largest pirate corporation in the world.

We should ban all ISP also. They pass the files to users.

Yes, but without them how will the consumers be able to access the nonpirated versions. In all seriousness though, if the ISPs banded together, they could hold the (first)world hostage. Trying to hold the ISP accountable for what it's users are doing is an extremely dangerous precedent. Right now (or at least last year) there were huge debates going on about just how much culpability social media platforms should take in regards to content posted on them, and it was chaos, everybody had different opinions and policies. Now imagine what that chaos would do if, instead of content rules being different from facebook to twitter, the rules differed from Verizon to Comcast

Apple store must be offender as well as you can buy computer and that provides everything necessary to do X.

You're right. But unless you have $100m for legal fees, being right is irrelevant.

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