The Google Bay | Hacker News Reader

The Google Bay

google.com

49 pointsdotcoma21 comments

Sigh, this is related to the Pirate Bay trial. The pirate bay does more than providing "search" for torrents.

They provide hosting for the torrent files and also they are running trackers for the torrent files. The torrent network is backed by these trackers, this is a key difference between Google and them.

Right, torrentz.com has been around for a while they provide the search, and aggregate all the trackers found for the same torrent across different sites. However they don't host the trackers nor do they store any torrent files.

Torrent files in themselves are not illegal. They are simply pointers, its the trackers that are at fault. Trackers facilitate the ability to download illegal content, where torrents and a search engine don't in themselves, they just link to trackers.

On the same note... Go google :) I just find it funny.

Trackers do not "know" if the content they are tracking is "illegal". They only have a hash over the content. Not even one ore more filenames.

So IMHO Trackers are not "at fault".

Google didn't do anything, it's a custom search, anyone can make one.

I'm certain google caches copyrighted content, making them an explicit distributor of the content. That's something no tracker does.

Either way, the pirate bay trial is a symptom of a bigger disease. I think this helps highlight that.

I believe there have been several court cases that have established that caching is OK.

Also, illegal content is (I presume) a large part of thepiratebay's searchable content, while it's a very small part of Googles searchable content. Legaly I believe that makes a big difference.

IIRC that was a key point in the Napster trial. It was hard to argue there was a "legitimate" use.

Just to shed some light, this is a Google Custom Search (http://www.google.com/coop/cse/) tool someone's set up. As previously stated it's fairly redundant in the presence of TPB and other trackers as it doesn't actually track torrents.

I never understood the pirate bay defence that they are like google.

Google never hosted torrents or trackers, Pirate Bay's entire existence is for hosting torrents and trackers.

Like a torrent, a search engine tells you where to find the information you're looking for. I think its a bit of a stretch, but I'm guessing thats the general idea

Pirate Bay hosts torrents which use many different tracks - not only The Pirate Bay's. And a .torrent file in that sense is similar to a link.

The idea is that The Pirate Bay merely points its users to where certain information can be found.

A torrent file is basically just a list of pieces, consisting of hashes and filenames and other very basic metadata that is in no way whatsoever copyrightable, and a tracker is just a thing that tells you who to contact to grab those pieces.

The only difference here is that Google sends this all at once in a static HTML file -- a big list of things related to your search, which almost always includes copyrighted content; and Google is worse than TPB, because Google keeps significant copies of copyrighted material server-side, whereas TPB and other torrent sites as a rule keep none.

I'm all for copyright reform, but I have a hard time seeing the side of the pro-TPB folks. Hosting torrents is one thing, but you don't have to look any further from the name to see their position on piracy. I love free movies as much as the next guy, and I'm certainly not innocent, but I do believe that content cheaters are entitled to compensation. It seems like this case is 10% genuine concern for the precedent it might be setting and 90% cognitive dissidence by self-entitled pirates.

not really a new feature, you could always search for torrents... just a feature made easier !

yes. but now: sue Google, instead of 4 Swedish young men ! :)

They aren't actually tracking these torrents though, unlike TPB. I can see where people are attempting to make the parallel (and why), but it really falls flat when you consider that Google is only being used to search for torrents, not store them.

It's possible that Google IS illegal according to that poorly worded Swedish law. But so what? It's not unconstitutional and I doubt anyone will care unless they actually did start going after legit sites.

Because authorities wouldn't be able to get hold of Google's search logs or anything like that.

It looks even more in place using the pirate language choice.

What's this, somebody created a Google Custom Search over the torrents tracked by thepiratebay?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com