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Comment by jeffreyrogers | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, there is a strange misconception on HN that the US legal system is totally broken and that everyone is out to get you. I don't think the data support this. Actually, I believe there is legal precedent that you can't be prosecuted for downloading something from a site like TPB, only from uploading to others (the reasoning is that when you upload you're a distributor).

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This is mostly true; it is perfectly legal to download copyrighted material. The crime is in distributing copyrighted material that you do not have any rights to. This means that I do not need to worry about if Hulu, Funimation, or whatever streaming service I am using is complying with the law and obtained the rights to stream their content.

However, in the case of torrents you are also uploading the content, which is illegal; and I believe there is precedent that you can be charged (although I do not have a case handy).

So just go set upload speed to 0 and enjoy the 4k game of thrones?

This strategy is mentioned in many bittorrent discussion.

What I have yet to see is any sort of justification for why it is ok to push personal risk onto other people, many of which have no idea how bittorrent works.

If you're going to use bittorrent for works that are protected by copyright, sharing in a small amount of risk is how the protocol works. Technical changes that actually reduce risks are fine; moving risk around is merely hoping someone who is ignorant of the technical details can be the patsy.

I'm not familiar with the specifics of the protocol, but your download speeds would be much slower without uploading. I believe that with BitTorrent, you are penalized/rewarded somehow for not uploading vs. uploading.

Not really, trackers will impose restrictions on users based on seeding ratios, but if you just DHT a random torrent whoever gets bandwidth is more down to random luck than priority towards other seeders. There is just no protocol level mechanism that prioritizes seeding to someone with a higher upload - the choice of who to seed to is up mostly to the implementation.

> I believe there is legal precedent that you can't be prosecuted for downloading something from a site like TPB, only from uploading to others

I did not know that's the case. Do you have a source to confirm this?

This used to be the case in the Netherlands, until an EU directive overrode it. No idea about the US, sorry.

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