Ask HN: Legality of hosting encrypted files?

3 points by jrokisky 13y ago ↗ HN

Lately I've been thinking about the legal ramifications of hosting encrypted copyrighted data.

If person X encrypts a copyrighted file with some algorithm/key, posts this encrypted file on hosting site A, and then shares the algorithm/key what would be the legal ramifications to hosting site A?

The hosting site could claim ignorance and saying that they are not hosting copyrighted data. In response the owner of the copyrighted data could show that through a series of transformations the data is the copyrighted data. That being said, can't any data be "transformed" to be that same copyrighted file?

Thanks for reading and looking forward to some feedback!

3 comments

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BrianPetro 13y ago ↗

Research the way Me.ga is getting around the liability issue. I think it may be something similar to what you proposed.

http://mashable.com/category/kim-dotcom/

sharth 13y ago ↗

I would imagine that in the USA, you just follow the DMCA. It doesn't matter if the file is encrypted or not encrypted, compressed or not compressed.

jrokisky 13y ago ↗

But how would it be proven that the file being hosted is the Copyrighted file? For example, say there are 100 files on a hosting site, and when they are XORed together they create a copyrighted file. Is this illegal? What about if there are only 99/100 files? Would it be considered illegal based on intent?