I've been imagining a grooveshark like site, run on magnet links, using browser based torrenting, and with all URLs and playlists user contributed. What's the legal precedent for suing that out of existence?
Pretty much all torrent index that have closed ? They were in a very similar position (no content is hosted, but they help piracy) and we can see where that lead them. Your idea is probably even harder to defend, because you'd be sending the webtorrent code directly along the list of torrents, instead of having to copy-paste a link in another application. As a user, it feels like I'm just clicking on a button to download (or play) music, so it feels like your site is directly distributing content (we can talk all day long about the technicalities, but we know they don't matter as much as we'd like)
At some point I hope the media conglomerates sue Google and lose. Long has it been the case where I can search "watch x [for free|online]" and Google will helpfully point me to a site where I can do just that, no need to install torrent software or anything. The difference from a torrent/magnet link hosting site may just be one of broad vs specific searching purpose but is that enough to continuously keep Google clean and torrent sites dirty?
That's because the facts have shown us that when it's about IP, it doesn't matter whether you're right or wrong:
- either you have no money at all, and you'll probably get a pass
- or you have some money, and you'll get sued until all that money goes into the rights-holders' pockets or your lawyers' pockets, whichever comes first
- or you have a fricking huge amount of money, so much that you can withstand any amount of trial thrown at you and probably come out victorious in the long run
It's an attrition fight, and Google is the clear dominant fighter in the arena
Yes, and they don't install malware. (At least, they've never infected me. But it's not like the media center PC is an unpatched Windows using IE and no adblocker. That'd be the honeypot (if I had one).)
What if the website itself doesn't do web-torrenting—in fact, it doesn't even make the magnet links links, instead just showing raw magnet hashes as text—but there also happens to be a well-known "unaffiliated" browser extension that does "gradual enhancement" of any site using the magnet-hash text "microformat", into a web-torrent download button?
The site doesn't link to copyrighted content. It doesn't link to anything, in fact.
And the extension doesn't contain any references to copyrighted content. It contains no content, and is completely unaware of any sources of content. (No explicit whitelist patterns for sites it should run on, etc.)
And—at least as far as anyone can tell—the two things have different authors.
But put them together, and oops! You've got a piracy program! User's fault for putting them together, of course.
Hashes whether linked or not are still gateways to copyright content.
What you're describing is not that different Google in some ways. ISOHunt tried to make the Google argument about just being a search engine... but the distinction is that your visitors come specifically for torrents (mostly of a copyright nature) and your index provides copyright content. Google on the other hand is a general purpose search engine where copyright infringement make up a small percentage of their search. Your site would have to be a general search engine site to have any compelling legal argument.
You define technical subtleties, but again the intent remains the same: sharing content without asking the relevant rights holders for authorization. You will still provide a search box to the user, where they will enter the title of the latest episode of the series they want to watch, and you're going to give them the relevant infohashes. You're trying to obfuscate but we all know what your end goal is.
You could alternatively try to argue that it’s not a “website,” but an app. Google calls certain websites “progressive apps,” for example, so it’s very plausible. That would be interesting.
