I hereby waive all  copyright and related or neighboring rights
together with all associated  claims and causes of action with
respect to this work to the extent  possible under the law.
- Anonymous

Feel free to improve and chat about this article at:
http://beta.etherpad.org/p/dM1np4f0yi

The following, first part is just an abstract, some notes about what
I am going to talk about. They are not part of the actual article.

Thoughts & Points:
Main two thoughts I would like to get across
(with the first one being the most important one in
my opinion):
- Now that The Pirate Bay is found guilty by the Swedish judge,
  if the technologically/architectural "new" Pirate Bay were found guilty too,
  what would prevent the content industry from monopolizing everything
  that even remotely touches their content, like via links -
  or even thoughts which are also a kind of link,
  - all thanks to their "all-rights-reserved"
  -> pointing out the absurdity (or danger, if you will)
     of extending the "all-rights-reserved" to mere linking
     (or maybe even the dangers of current "all-rights-reserved"
      interpretation which covers any content distribution)
- If someone were writing a software which allows retrieving
  content by other unique identifiers other than a hash,
  for instance an ISBN, if people could then just click
  a link (inserted into the website by this software)
  on the Amazon website to download the content instead
  of buying it, would that out of a sudden make Amazon
  illegal and guilty, too?

Intentions:
- Letting the public know why the tracker-less (and soon torrent-file-less)
  Pirate Bay website might be more legally resistant
- A public discussion about the thoughts raised above
- Some better public understanding of what a magnet link is

Style & Structure:
- The first part shall be a soft, not too long introduction
  about what I'm going to talk about and elaborate on
- The second part shall give a little more technical description
  of magnet links, might need a little more energy from the reader,
  but is hopefully not sounding too difficult and will still
  let the reader feel smart in the end due to having learned
  something geeky
- The last part shall be fun and easy to read again, with a touch of
  black humor, but shall make the reader wonder in the end
  whether something like this could actually become real

--------------------------------------------------------------


Amazon Soon to Be Shutdown Due to Copyright Infringements
=========================================================

__The Pirate Bay Founders' [appeal was rejected][tpbrej] two weeks ago. Let us have
a look which implications this will have for other websites linking
to copyrighted material in the future - and our society in general.__


We all know, that The Pirate Bay is not actually storing any illegal content.
Instead it is only providing links to the actual content, something
which "allisfine"'s tiny script, which produces a 90MB zipped Pirate Bay, and Ernesto's report
have vividly [demonstrated][tpbzip] last week. Also the fact that The Pirate
Bay can and is going to simply [remove torrent files][tpbdel] from their website
soon shows, that a torrent file is actually just a kind of link to the real
content as well - though a slightly heavier and less convenient one compared
to a cute and sexy magnet link, of course.

Basically, the [verdict][tpbverd] found the Pirate Bay founders' guilty
due to knowingly providing links to content they do not own the copyright to.
To be able to further elaborate on the implications of this verdict
and to clarify which links other than magnet links would fit
the same category, let me briefly explain what a magnet link is first.


Magnet Links
------------

A magnet link usually starts with a "magnet:": Seven characters which
lets both humans and machines know, that the following text, well, is
a magnet link - and not for instance a hyperlink to a website ("http:")
or a file server ("ftp:") or just some random text ("just some random text").

This prefix is usually followed by various parameters. But in fact just
a single one is mandatory in the case of bittorrent, the
["xt=urn:btih:<some weird values>"][bep9]. "xt" stands for "exact topic" -
or you could think of "xt" as:
"The following <some weird values> is an exact, unique name
for the content I am referring to" (technically, <some weird values> actually
does not refer to the content directly, but to a torrent file which in return
refers to the actual content).

Those "<some weird values>", a cryptographic hash, is enough for a p2p
software to know what you want and allows it to download _exactly_ this content -
nothing more, nothing less, nothing else. So for instance I can be sure
that with the hash [c3fb0342b9b85280978f38e27a2f6431fbabf00b][fcll] you will
get the exact same content I want to share with you (this is an awesome
book by the way, I recommend anyone to download and read it :) ).

OK, so a magnet link basically consists of a unique name,
a number uniquely identifying some content. But is such a unique naming scheme
something revolutionary, something a few Uber-Crypto-Hacker came up with
a few years ago in their secret cellar while experimenting with this new
thing called "Internet"?

Well, a crypto hash is definitely something cool and "new". And scientists
around the world are constantly trying to make it stronger
and stronger against any amount of [super computers, hackers or time][sha3]
(if you can hack any crypto hash, then you have basically cracked all
online banking systems at once).

However unique naming schemes in general are not: 0143034650 is a number
which points to the exact same book as c3fb0342b9b85280978f38e27a2f6431fbabf00b.
The first number is probably a number your parents are more familiar with
than with the second one: It is an [ISBN][isbn], a unique identifier and "name" for a book,
a number you will probably find in the cover of any book
you have in your bookshelf (if you still have something as oldschool as a bookshelf
or printed book).

Just like an ISBN a magnet link itself provides _no_ means to retrieve
the content. The crypto hash cannot tell you _where_ to get the content.
This fundamentally differentiates a magnet link, our cute "magnet:" from for
instance a hyperlink, the good ol' "http:", which also specifies _where_
to get the content (computer science differentiates between the terms "URN",
a [Uniform Resource Name][urn] and a "URL", a [Uniform Resource Locator][url])
Also any torrent file on The Pirate Bay did _never_ provide any
such specific location and was therefore just a fancy name and
not a locator, just like their magnet links.

Now that we know better what the Swedish court means with "links"
and now that we know for sure that they do not just mean pointing to
a location for content, but in fact also any general identification of content,
let us have a look at what implications this trial will have for other sites on
the internet in the future. Any usage of the word "link" in the following
text can be read as "identifier" to fit the Swedish judge's definition.


Implications
------------

A site even higher up the ranks (thepiratebay.org is currently listed [rank 91 on Alexa][ax91],
the new thepiratebay.se is currently on [rank 643][ax643])
which also links to copyrighted material and lets people post reviews and comments,
similar to The Pirate Bay website, is: Amazon ([rank 10 on Alexa][ax10]).

Also, we are having leaked email evidence, that Amazon employees are fully aware
that they are linking to works, like books, movies or music, which they do not own
the copyright for.

Very prominently featured are for instance in the case of books the title, author
and ISBN:
[IMG]
Which could have been easily obfuscated to reduce the risk of copyright infringements.

Even worse, their website is making active recommendations to other copyrighted
materials, therefore not only avoiding to reduce the risk of copyright infringements,
but also actively, knowingly encouraging them.

Amazon is already a long time thorn in the flesh of various content industries.
It causes Warner and Sony millions of dollars in lost revenues -
money they would have made if they were offering a similarly convenient service.

So it is only a matter of time until Amazon.com will be sued by the MPAA
and RIAA and forced to shut down forever.

To avoid suffering the same doom as The Pirate Bay and soon Amazon
we are strongly suggesting anyone
to remove any text or images which could uniquely or even very likely identify
and therefore link to a work they do not own the copyright for. Posting ISBN
numbers on your website are of course a taboo now, but also keep in mind that
various pieces of information can together link to a very specific content:
For instance in the case of movies a title together with
a release date or a director's name will do.

It is therefore recommended to only use generic sentences in
conversations like "I really liked reading you-know-which book".
But even here, be careful, there are pitfalls:
Terms like "You-Know-Who", "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named"
or "the Dark Lord" might for instance already be subject to
copyright of a British author I may not name.

To stay on the safe side, it is probably the best to even
avoid thinking about copyrighted works as someone might
interpret the look in your eyes as linking to
certain copyrighted materials.

Or just switch over to works under a Creative Commons or similar license.


Links
-----

[fcll]: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:c3fb0342b9b85280978f38e27a2f6431fbabf00b&dn=Free+Culture+%28Lawrence+Lessig%29&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.publicbt.com%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.ccc.de%3A80

[ax91]: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/thepiratebay.org

[ax10]: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/amazon.com

[ax643]: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/thepiratebay.se

[tpbrej]: https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-founders-prison-sentences-final-supreme-court-appeal-rejected-120201/

[tpbzip]: https://torrentfreak.com/download-a-copy-of-the-pirate-bay-its-only-90-mb-120209/

[tpbdel]: https://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-will-stop-serving-torrents-120112/

[tpbverd]: https://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-appeal-verdict-101126/

[isbn]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Number

[sha3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIST_hash_function_competition

[urn]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Resource_Name

[url]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_resource_locator

[bep9]: http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0009.html

[IMG]: http://pastebin.com/RM10aYgB
(A screenshot of an Amazon article with a rediculous amount of
blackening; ISBN, names etc. not visible anymore, just the cover and
some text)