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Comment by KaiserPro | Hacker News Reader

Wait, so you can host a torrent site in the USA and not get your domain ceased by the FBI?

If you follow the DMCA I don't see why not.

The category of civil liability for which the compliance with the DMCA notice and takedown rules offers a safe harbor, first of all, doesn’t overlap with the conduct which constitutes criminal infringement but, more importantly, even if it did the DMCA safe harbor only applies to civil and not criminal liability in the first place.

“Following the DMCA” is irrelevant to anything the FBI would be involved in.

The DMCA absolutely applies. If you follow it, which includes no induction or willfull infrigment, you never rise out of civil liability to criminal. The FBI gets involved once you're past that.

This is not true. The DMCA’s “safe harbor” provisions do not provide any sort of bulwark against criminal prosecution. Only against civil liability and injunctive relief.

If you follow the DMCA (e.g., honor takedown notices, register an agent if you’re a platform, and act quickly when notified), your exposure to criminal liability is essentially zero.

Because the DMCA’s safe-harbor provisions only apply to sites that adhere to its requirements. Sites whose primary purpose is to host torrent files or infohashes arguably don’t qualify.

If the DMCA allowed US operators to host torrent catalogs openly, there’d be a plethora of them.

The US does allow it. No one has tried it without trying to induce cipyright infrigment or following the DMCA properly.

Also its hard and extremely expensive to defend yourself to prove it in a niche specifically where people are looking not to pay making it harder to montize to defend properly.

> No one has tried it without trying to induce cipyright [sic] infrigment or following the DMCA properly.

Why do you think that is?

Because this is the only relevant case I can find or remember. "The MPAA had presented evidence showing that the majority of content linked to on IsoHunt was infringing content, that the search engine was tuned to assist users in finding infringing works, and that Fung himself had made remarks suggesting the purpose of the site was to allow users to download infringing content."

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

My question was "why do you think torrent sites in the USA that adhere to safe-harbor requirements don't exist?"

Simple, because I haven't launched one yet, but may get there sooner or later; First had to deal with another novel issue of copyright first.

https://torrentfreak.com/tag/yout/

No because torrenting is anti-capitalism and that's not tolerated culturally (Communist behaviour). However I doubt they'll be blocking WhatsApp and iMessage any time soon, or making people upload their ID to watch "adult content".

> However I doubt they'll be [...] making people upload their ID to watch "adult content".

https://www.google.com/search?q=texas%20porn%20law

They just forced TikTok US to be sold to a US company with a US commissar as a board member.

That's because TikTok facilitated criticism of their ((greatest ally)).

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