Worth mentioning that usually you don't end up in legal troubles for consuming copyrighted material but for reproducing/sharing copyrighted material, and often not until you do so at scale.
Is there actually? In Germany I have heard of people getting served with fines for downloading torrents, as sharing a torrent identifies you through your IP. I've never heard of anyone getting into trouble for streaming or downloading a file, and I'm not sure how it could realistically be detected.
Bittorrent is legally clear-cut, because the sharing part is a clear copyright infringement (you are distributing the work without authorization).
Streaming (typically) isn't that clear, because consuming the work is technically not forbidden by copyright law in most countries. It's a bit like reading a book in a bookshop without buying it.
Detection is fairly easy in both cases, they just cannot go after consumers.
The legality gives people power to knock on the doors of ISPs, who can (and often do) know everything. Even without that, authorities can (and occasionally do) run honeypots after they find and disband the main site operators.
There is no technical solution to the anti-piracy war, it's entirely a legal problem.
There is growing legal pressure to not consider an IP address used as evidence that the "owner" of said IP address is the one doing the activity.
For example, my IP address is paid for by me, through a run-of-the-mill ISP subscription. Does that make me legally liable for all the activity of the other person that lives with me and uses "my" network for all their private internet traffic?
I guess there are laws about facilitating piracy, and whatnot, but you can't reasonably expect me to screen all my fiance's activity on the network. Most of it is encrypted anyway. I can't be on the hook for that.
I'm privileged in that I have an ISP that feels the same way as I do about this. They've fought for the privacy of their subscribers before, and will likely keep doing so in the future, because an IP address does not identify any individual.
The idea of respondeat superior (vicarious liability) has been around a really long time. That the legal system would try to apply the concepts to the internet is not really unexpected.
I don't think you should be held responsible for the actions of the other people on your network if they can be held responsible.
What do you propose should happen if your network is in fact used to facilitate criminal or tortious activity?
A couple of years ago the European court of justice actually decided that streaming itself is already illegal. That is, if it's reasonable to assume that you knew it was an illegal stream. I haven't heard about a case of it ever being prosecuted though.
I'm not sure I should point this out, but there are organisations (Microsoft, Apple, maybe Google) that have obvious access to this information. It could be subpoenaed from them.
I used those qualifier words as HN tends to be pretty pedantic, and I happen to know it is illegal in some countries, and pretty sure someone from one of those countries would pass by and be like "Actually, in X it's illegal no matter what".
People “usually don’t” get arrested for possession of a small amount of cocaine; but I sure wouldn’t want to be one of those obscure cases. I agree ‘usually’ is almost never good enough when personal risk is involved.
That’s the funny thing about downloading copyrighted works with BitTorrent in Germany, it automatically counts as "at scale" for the courts because you’ll have many peers that all download a bit from you.
