Private torrent sites are legal ?

[nipple]

yes for sure illegal

[pone44]

Edit-http://www.tehroot.com/signup.php
Found one has 0 files 7 peers, legal for now. Am i correct

Was going to post something similar. What could be legal with say a regular 0 day site such as TD,the owner of the pig was arrested. Site is legal until 1st upload? Basically has to be free, no making money for profit. Idk?

the owner of the site is not responsible for what the users upload.....

sure, tell that to the owner of Oink...

[Eargasm]

If the site is only for transferring public domain files, or to distributed your own copyrighted files, or otherwise authorized copyrighted files... well, then you are OK.

If it is distribute others' copyrighted files then it depends on the country, frankly speaking. Some countries it is illegal, and others not so much.

[Tokeman]

But the problem is the site itself isn't transferring or hosting any files at all, its all the userbase. Arguably, all torrent sites are legal, the users may be conducting illegal business thats all.

Think of it this way (and in this example the files ARE hosted on the site):
Some one uploads child porn to rapidshare. Should rapidshare be shut down? No, they go after that one user. Now suppose rapidshare was a private site. How does that change anything? It doesn't, the site is not responsible for users breaking the TOS.

Now one could argue that most torrent sites aren't enforcing their own policies and rules, but does their lack of administration make the site illegal, especially since no content is actually on the servers that the admins control?

[JPaul]

As legal as can be ...

Seriously ... no they are not if you intend to involve in the sharing of copyrighted material.
A private torrent site an sich ain't illegal. It's what happens within the tracker that can make it illegal.

What he said.

Tho' in English.

In the UK you are responsible for what users upload. Indeed it's a more serious offence. Facilitating is considered criminal whilst breach of copyright is considered a civil matter (so long as it's not for profit).

[jasperr]

legality is such a grey area these days, if a country like sweden has no laws on the subject.. you could say yes.. but on the opposite side you can say no... just as you can host a site there and "feel free" about it.. a group like brien or some equivalent can come in get swedish co-operation(which most likely wouldn't be hard to do) and take your ass to jail and be just as right as you... so, that part is a double edged sword

[ryan20021982]

Theres no reason to keep arguing about it because in the end
it all depends on what the judge believes anyways

[dinamo82]

the owner of the site is not responsible for what the users upload.....

but he is responsible if he doesn't delete it and remove it from the site, and in 99% of cases is like that

[Tokeman]

the owner of the site is not responsible for what the users upload.....

but he is responsible if he doesn't delete it and remove it from the site, and in 99% of cases is like that

That only applies if they are notified of the offending file. The admin wouldn't know if a user has rights or not to a movie, until whoever owned it complains. Most sites state that users must have the rights to the files uploaded. Its not up to the admin to babysit every upload and track legal rights. Just like google has take down requests they have to honor, so should torrent sites. Since they are private, and public can't see the files, I'm sure they would get little to no take down requests. This would affect your statement drastically, as no requests are probably made to take down content.

[lhnz]

If they are being used to "facilitate the sharing of copyrighted material" then they're illegal. If people are only "facilitating the sharing of material they legally own" then it's fine.