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Comment by msl | Hacker News Reader

I really cannot see copyright being violated in that screenshot. It is just a listing of torrent files available on one of the indexed sites. You could use Google search to produce a similiar effect (showing links to torrent files being hosted on some web site).

Edit: I'm not trying to be snarky or overtly pedantic, and the list of supported sites does suggest that this might be intended to facilitate piratism. Still, this is interesting and potentially useful technology, and seeing it merely as a tool for copyright infringement misses an important point.

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Google does not advertise itself as a way to violate copyright. This repo does, though.

How so? If indexing the content of some sites is seen as advertising copyright violation, so does Google.

If the content of the sites are the problem, well why would Google get a free pass on that point too?

The goal of the application itself, just like Google's, doesn't have anything to do with copyright violation, it just can be used that way.

Have a look at this repo for yourself if you don't believe me. The image demonstrates the tool being used for copyright violations. It's billing itself that way, no?

Are we looking at the same image? The one I see shows a search for the term "hdtv" with some results from an idexed site. I really can't see how the user has in any way violated anyone's copyright.

Edit: Removed an irrelevant addendum.

It's not like the image is somehow accidental or out of the author's control. I don't know how you wouldn't read this as advertising a way to violate copyrights, it's an explicit advertisement of the sort of content you can find.

If the image weren't a suitable representation, then the author wouldn't have chosen it. You're trying to downplay that these sorts of decisions are intentional.

This is like an advertisement for guns, with a laser sight on the gun, pointed at someone.

Gun ownership is not a crime. But the gun is shown in a scenario where a crime is about to be committed.

At first I didn't have any issue but this analogy seems to have convinced me it's a bad image to use.

Or the image was a random search and there isn't a team of marketing and legal experts to interpret a quick demo in the worst way possible.

But I'm sure the maintainer will be happy to modify the picture with a search for "big buck bunny" if you ask nicely.

I think it's because of the search term "hdtv" results you see in the screenshot. This wouldn't have been the case if the search terms like, say "ubuntu iso" being used.

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