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Comment by fine_tune | Hacker News Reader

You bought a house that had a murder X years ago and are wondering if your guilty for the murder, probably not - aslong as you don't do more murder in it.

I suppose real life is more interesting though, the guy who picked up the domain to stop the global ransomware crisis was picked up after Defcon if memory serves.

Ironically your probably at more risk from the GDPR for leaking those IP addresses that connected to the box via your blog post.

I'm not a lawyer/solicitor though, don't take my advise.

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the guy (marcus hutchins) wasn't arrested for registering that domain, he was arrested for allegedly creating an unrelated piece of malware.

I think it's more like you buy an abandoned house where people used to go buy drugs

you buy the house and people are still coming knocking on your door asking you if you have any drugs to sell

you're not doing anything wrong, but if the police notice people constantly coming to your house to buy drugs they may do something about it

Other perspective: It's more like you reopen a public place where people were known to publicly harm copyright owners and you provide technical help so they can do it again.

> I suppose real life is more interesting though, the guy who picked up the domain to stop the global ransomware crisis was picked up after Defcon if memory serves

That dude developed and sold banking malware, that's why he got arrested.

This guy didn't just buy the haunted house that previously had signs directing serial killers to where the victims are, he also reinstalled the signs and opened it back up to the public knowing that the serial killers were still around and reading the signs.

I mean, it's a bit absurd to compare copyright infringement to murder, but that's where your analogy started. He didn't just by the domain and do something innocent, he actually started running the software that helps people pirate things strongly suspecting that pirates would use it to help them pirate things... and then when he observed that was reality he (smartly IMO) shut it down.

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