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The use of Tribler was problematic in my case because it uses a random torrent cache that was instrumentalized for lawfare after a political problem with my public employer in Spain. I was accused of having pedophile content on my computer after the prosecution's expert selected the corresponding torrents and downloaded them. It seems there are always pedophile torrents in a random sample of torrents.

The political problem was that I refused to alter statistical data for a "scientist" that wanted to publish that women after abortion develop mental health issues. They search my job computer for something to kill me and found tribler cache.

https://www.publico.es/actualidad/rioja-paga-estudios-salud-...

It was hard. Lost job, six years under juditial prosecution... at the end, the case was dismissed, I could show that the torrent cache was not personal, but the damage was great.

Be careful if you are an activist or have political involvement. I'm unaware of the workings of the current version, hope it encrypts the torrent cache somehow.



Why does tribler automatically download random torrents without user intervention? Is it just to perform distributed search?

In this case, it downloads random torrent _metadata_ right? How could the case be brought with just metadata? Regardless of whether the torrent cache was personal or not, if it was just metadata it still didn't contain anything illegal


linking to illegal data may be prosecuted as distribution, even if you're not the host

if you're contributing to a distributed index where people are searching and retrieving material thanks to the meta data on your drive, IMHO that's pretty close to distribution


So if someone puts a sticker on your car that has the url of an illegal website, then you may be prosecuted for illegal distribution?


If i signed up for a membership to the "stick an url on my car club" then yea


> linking to illegal data may be prosecuted as distribution, even if you're not the host

Google also links to illegal data and actually Google is probably the largest distributor illegal data in human history (if by "distribution" we include linking)


and they benefit from safe harbor laws allowing them to remove the link as they are notified of its illegality


Yeah the point here is how this kind of legislation can also benefit distributed search engines

Otherwise what is actually being legislated here is that search engines must be centralized, cementing Google's stranglehold on this field


here's the thing with law, it's not code.

if they argue nonsense and the judge buys, it's that.

law enforcement uses hashes of bad content. torrent conveniently uses hashes. the expert can argue if you have the hash you have the content because how torrent works.

the judge that accepted the argument about how torrent works but refused the argument about how tribler or freenet etc works should be disbarred imho.


“Problematic” is perhaps the biggest understatement I’ve ever read. Sorry that this happened to you.


Did you consider that it might have been your employer who tricked your Tribler software to download the illegal files in the first place?




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