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Comment by Esau | Hacker News Reader

They are not a US site so why would they concern themselves with the DMCA?

That's not the point. They claimed to be DMCA-compliant, whether they need to doesn't have bearing to whether that's true.

I've not researched their compliance in detail, but from a purely logical perspective, the point would be that they are DMCA-compliant by being exempt from any actions required of them in response to DMCA requests. They comply with all DMCA requirements, which for them is none.

If their only claim is being outside US jurisdiction, then "we are DMCA-compliant" is a misleading and false claim to make.

They may not be subject to DMCA, but then they're "not DMCA compliant, for good reason".

They are not subject to DMCA (not being inside the USA). However, even though they are not subject, they are still "DMCA compliant" because they do not store any data that could infringe upon copyrights, they only store links to that data (or links to ways of accessing).

I like the point @redthrowaway made. "I don't serve food to the public out of my office. Thus, I am trivially in compliance with food safety laws." In the same way, TPB are compliant with the DMCA (and also compliant with food safety laws).

Sure, it might seem like a silly defense, but it's true and it works.

>they do not store any data that could infringe upon copyrights, they only store links to that data

This argument has largely not held up in court. See Isohunt.

I've asked elsewhere in this thread for a single example of this argument (for a torrent site) working in US courts, and nobody had one. Do you know of any?

As far as I know the isohunt case was settled, so no legal presendent was set?

https://torrentfreak.com/isohunt-shuts-down-after-110-millio...

There's some more detail in the Wikipedia page:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IsoHunt#Legal

As far as I know there are two issues: 1) whatever the technical details, if it can be shown that the intent is overwhelmingly to fascilitate unlicensed copying - then any search engine could be held to be illegal.

b) These other cases are old; there are technical differences between indexing magnet links and storing torrent files, not to mention running torrent trackers. While intent is still important, I'm not sure the technical differences don't matter now.

As far as I know linking to illegal content is (mostly) legal.

Isohunt lost in court, and settled while appealing.

>While intent is still important, I'm not sure the technical differences don't matter now.

I'm not sure of this either, but the "DMCA doesn't affect hashes" argument hasn't been tested, and it's sufficiently murky that I don't think it can be pre-judged with confidence.

> I've asked elsewhere in this thread for a single example of this argument (for a torrent site) working in US courts, and nobody had one. Do you know of any?

When The Pirate Bay falls under US jurisdiction, your request will matter.

This does not sound logical at all. Suppose part of complying with DMCA requirements is to remove the offending material - are you suggesting that by being exempt from having to do so they are complying with the requests?

The point is that they don't have any offending material. They have links, and/or hashes; neither of which can possibly be considered 'offensive' under the current state of DMCA precedent.

If the laws of their country change in a way that forces them to comply with the DMCA as it is, they're still not infringing. That they aren't obligated to comply with the DMCA as it sits is kind of irrelevant to the conversation, considering the follow-on point is also true.

I think I see your point. So in order for TPB to be considered out of compliance with the DMCA there would have to be a clause in the DMCA where it clearly states that magnet links to copyrighted material are not allowed?

I think that either that, or deep linking would have to be outlawed, which would obviously yield questionable results.

I don't serve food to the public out of my office. Thus, I am trivially in compliance with food safety laws. Same with TPB. It hosts no content which is subject to the DMCA, and so is trivially compliant.

This is stupid. We don't store any patient data thus we are HIPPA compliant?

>This is stupid.

This is not a constructive way to have a discussion, and is unwelcome on HN.

>We don't store any patient data thus we are HIPPA compliant?

Yes, trivially so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuous_truth

How is that not considered flagrant lying?

From your link: "For example, a child might tell his or her parent 'I ate every vegetable on my plate', when there were no vegetables on the child's plate to begin with."

Please read the linked article again. Any statement made about members of the empty set is trivially true. This is also known as the Principle of Explosion[1]. It's not lying; it's formal logic. Some further reading: http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/137890/why-is-it-sen...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion

Yes, exactly. And when someone tries to sue you out of existence for improperly handling patient data, responding with "Improper handling? We don't handle it at all!" is a fantastic defense.

You might piss off whomever your contract is with when you tell them you've been deleting data instead of storing it, and there may be grounds for a different lawsuit. But they can't say you're not HIPPA compliant. [0]

[0] I don't 100% know the specifics of HIPPA, so I'm not sure if this would really apply, because I know you need to keep detailed audits and logs of various things.

AFAIK, .org is a US controlled domain.

As of 2015, ICANN is an internationally controlled entity.

AFAIK, the RIAA was complaining about a .SE domain to the .org registrars.

Several TLD registries exist under US control, allowing for their use in exerting US will.

Why i have long wanted to see the gTLDs moved to .us to make that overt.

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