A torrent tracker doesn’t host anything either. It’s merely a lighthouse for people to know who is hosting it. And trackers are hosted exclusively in certain specific countries because of that.
I’m not sure that’s true. Most private trackers accept donations. Some even require you to buy some seedbox plan they get commission from (even though that’s generally frowned upon).
All the high profile trackers I can think of that were shutdown through legal notice (Mininova, isoHunt, KickassTorrent, ThePirateBay, etc) were all public trackers. Maybe they had ads or something on their website, but their shutdown had nothing to do with them making money. They were shutdown for piracy even though they never “hosted” any content. They were just trackers.
Hell, even Popcorn Time, a software that just let you easily search torrents and stream them, it hosted nothing, just connected you to trackers that had movies was too shutdown by legal notice.
Trackers that survive are usually hosted behind VPNs and are physically located in Russia or China.
A torrent tracker doesn’t host anything either. It’s merely a lighthouse for people to know who is hosting it. And trackers are hosted exclusively in certain specific countries because of that.
I think the issues with trackers is they were making money out of it? Iirc the trackers themselves, if kept from making a profit are untouchable
I’m not sure that’s true. Most private trackers accept donations. Some even require you to buy some seedbox plan they get commission from (even though that’s generally frowned upon).
All the high profile trackers I can think of that were shutdown through legal notice (Mininova, isoHunt, KickassTorrent, ThePirateBay, etc) were all public trackers. Maybe they had ads or something on their website, but their shutdown had nothing to do with them making money. They were shutdown for piracy even though they never “hosted” any content. They were just trackers.
Hell, even Popcorn Time, a software that just let you easily search torrents and stream them, it hosted nothing, just connected you to trackers that had movies was too shutdown by legal notice.
Trackers that survive are usually hosted behind VPNs and are physically located in Russia or China.