Legal Issues

The use of bit torrent client software as well as the indexing sites themselves brings up many legal issues mainly regarding the transmission of copyrighted data. In many countries, it has already been determined that legal actions can be taken place against sites that give links to spread pirated software, movies and music. In reality, the indexing websites themselves do not even deal in the pirated data, as that data is on the millions of privately owned computers around the world. The ability to enforce the copyright laws on such a large scale can be extremely costly and therefore the companies that want reimbursement for the spreading of pirated data go after the indexing sites themselves.

Over the last few years there has been many lawsuits and raids on various servers that host these indexing websites. The fact of the matter is, that the only thing on these servers is a small metadata file that contains a hash key which tells the bit torrent client software how to connect to the other computers who have the data. In countries like Sweden, it has already been brought up to a court of law, that since the hash keys are not the actual copyrighted data itself, there can therefore be no recourse.

The biggest bit torrent indexing website as of current is that of the Pirate Bay who’s servers and offices are in Sweden. On their website, the have their notorious Legal section and within this legal section are the copies of various emails and contacts between different copyright authorities from around the world and the site owners themselves. The copyright authorities are constantly bashed over the course of the emails, so much, that after a raid on their offices by Swedish officials, they made a documentary entitled How to Steal a Movie. They offer this documentary on their website for anyone who wants to know about the raid and court actions over the course of the 72 hour period in which the Pirate Bay was shut down.

Although the Pirate Bay was lucky to be covered under their local laws, many other bit torrent indexing websites have not been so lucky. One site was even shut down by the U.S. FBI who then took over the site in a form of entrapment to get more information on the people who were downloading various pirated software and copyrighted data.

The heightened possibility of being able to accept and distribute copyrighted data, is what brings up the legal complications involved with the various bit torrent indexing websites around the world.

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