To use your analogy TPB are literally only providing a taxi service though, they don&#x27;t know or care if you&#x27;re going to the bank and if you&#x27;re making a deposit, recovering stolen property or robbing it.<p>In USA format shifting is allowed, downloading a format shifted copy of media is logically equivalent and morally probably slightly superior (less time&#x2F;energy waste?). Don&#x27;t know if that line of reasoning had been tested yet? There are countries where it is not a tort to download nor upload what would otherwise be considered copyright material.<p>In short TPB does nothing in terms of contributory infringement that other indexing sites (Google, Bing, etc) don&#x27;t do.<p>There behaviour is the same no matter your intent; do you have a more convincing argument that accounts for common carrier protections and explains why of I get a work using a link from Google it&#x27;s not infringing but getting one from TPB makes it tortuous?