Hanff argues that BitTorrent hubs should be covered by the same rulings that have made P2P services legal in the US. The hubs don't host actual movie files. They point people to computers where the movies are stored. It's the users and not the hub owners that are directly infringing on the movie studios' copyrights. And with personal files and open source software being moved via BitTorrent technology, there are plenty of substantial non-infringing uses for the hubs.
"Torrent files don't contain any data," Hanff said. "This is a search engine scenario. Why aren't Google, Yahoo or Microsoft getting sued?"
http://www.theregister.com/2005/03/15/mpaa_hanff_suit/