MD5 Hash filter

[akellym]

I am trying to get a torrent site to stop making our copyrighted content available on the search engine. This would save a lot of time having to search and re-search their site for our content. I have a lot of succes with other site restricting our content from their search engines. The current site I'm working on sent the following statement:

"We are using a MD5 Hash filter instead of a word filter.
Therefore it is not possible to upload an identical file again onto our
server. Due to this system it is not possible to add your suggested word to the word filter."

Is this a true statement?

 

[zach]

I remember hearing about this a few years ago when some of the large torrent sites were being sued by Hollywood for allowing users to download movies, I don't know if those measures are still in place.

The team behind TorrentSpy, a torrent search site, has rolled out a new copyright protection scheme which the founders claim can be used to track infringing material on the web. The FileRights service, as it’s known, will use md5 hashes to track suspect files and eliminate them from search engines that subscribe to FileRights.

The idea behind the project is to eliminate the need to file DMCA takedown notices against every site hosting a file by creating a central database capable of tracking files.

Our own Treat Level blog has some more background on FileRights and wonders how the technology might work in practice — in short, it won’t.

Most of the information I have on it is a few years old, so I can't say for sure if the system still is in place and functional. I'm also not sure if FileRights is being ran still by TorrentSpy but since then that domain has changed to

http://torrentrights.org/

You may have to do some more research on the topic.