“The Pirate Bay can’t be stopped,” co-founder says
torrentfreak.com
torrentfreak.com
Tried to download it after the purchase, but the mp3 was ONLY available in the cloud for various devices, not for direct download. There was language that might have implied this was the case, but it was not clear or I was oblivious, probably the latter.
I was refunded my $1.29 and went straight to a pirate site and got it for free. I would rather have paid. Occasionally, the availability of piracy is a check on bad ideas, in this case, cloud walled gardens.
For what it's worth, the language and layout was probably A/B tested and painstakingly tuned to maximise the probability of you making that mistake. Don't blame yourself when there's this unfair power imbalance, blame them for using their power against you maliciously.
This sort of belief (that corporations do extensive testing and tuning of language) seems quite widely held, but I've never seen much support for it.
I've frequently seen claims that Amazon must have "A/B tested and painstakingly tuned" the company name, whereas it was really just the founder's whim after watching a documentary, and never received any testing of any kind.
Employee #2 at amzn.
But sure, that doesn't count because I got out before the company hit 20 employees.
I don't doubt that large corporations with heavy technology dependence engage in what you're describing to cover some aspects of their operations. I do doubt that is covers all aspects, and in particular, I very much doubt if amzn A/B tested the language described in the GP for the purposes claimed by the parent of my comment.
EDIT: Given the comment @ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29374358 I should probably just accept that for amzn at least, I'm just wrong.
There is not some painstaking language optimization designed to trick users. But there is not a filter for clarity either, so the A/B testing naturally favors "dark patterns" - it's not malicious design, it's just unintended consequences, and gives the impression that Amazon et al are deliberately hostile when they are really just ignorant
Could there be such a thing as "meta-malicious design?" Bad consequences aren't executed directly, but conditions are put in place that cause the emergence of bad consequences.
I suspect, if AI ever does away with Homo sapiens it will be by convincing us not to breed by changing our incentive structures.
I think it'll be by just sitting back and waiting a few decades :)
The sci-fi tinfoil hat interpretation of this: It's already here, or at least its cronies and enablers, and the plan has already been put into effect.
— John Stuart Mill, 1867
For instance, I was in charge of design for a mortgage lender's web site. I begged my manager to let me try (for lulz) an A/B test replacing the photo of the woman call centre operator next to the quote form with a photo of a Labrador retriever wearing a headset (you knew he was a professional because he also wore glasses and a necktie). The dog form consistently outperformed the woman by 19% but we had to roll it back after a couple of weeks because.. well.. dog.
At any given time, a single engineer might have a couple of A/B tests running. That's the single biggest engineering change I have seen in the last 20 years.
A/B tests are now crazy simple to set up; just click a few buttons and decide how much traffic to send. The major con is that it leaves a lot of dead code behind when the best of N A/B test arms are launched; the (N-1) unsuccessful arms stick around as dead code.
I’ve run splits for everything from background colors to copy changes. If product management anticipates some facet could influence outcome, then it will be tested.
I recall integrating with a beta AWS A/B testing sdk back in ~2015 (may be off on the year) and I'm certain that some the examples in the docs were along the lines of, say, testing two different wordings for a label in your app and measuring the change in engagement. But that's not inherently nefarious, it's just analytics. They ended up shutting down that SDK and the web dashboarding for it IIRC.
Now, A/B testing for the purpose of tuning languages towards deceptive dark patterns? It's harder to prove, but I think it follows that if they're A/B testing other changes, there's no reason that deceptive changes wouldn't also be A/B tested as a matter of course.
I obviously can't speak to this case in particular but for pieces of text that are part of the core user flow (not necessarily true in this case), I'd be shocked if A/B tests weren't going on at any large company.
But the initial amzn logo was picked merely on the whims of the founder and first two programmers. It was never focus-grouped or evaluated by anyone else.
I was on a plane with no internet, so troubleshooting the error was impossible. Furthermore, I can’t test playback of a movie in the future because doing so starts the three day expiration timer.
In the future I guarantee I’ll be torrenting.
There's no way Plex and Emby should be better than Apple's equivalent, but they are IMO.
Yeah. The video player straight up sucks. We had better software than this decades ago. There's just no way these things will ever be able to compete with something like mpv but we're forced to use them because it's the only legal way to watch something.
Also Jellyfin, the FLOSS Emby fork that has taken on its own life and has recently gotten a lot more stable
My only nitpick is, that for some reason the default subtitles are "language + SDH" and not just "language".
To paraphrase Chris Rock talking about OJ, "now I'm not saying you should have pirated... But I understand!"
Are you planning on keeping the Apple TV subscription? Are you only going to to torrent something that is currently running on Apple TV while you have a paid for subscription?
If so, what would really be so different from you "taping" something on regular TV back in the VHS days? (apart from it nowadays probably not being legal - go figure).
Pirates rob ships in the see and use guns for that purpose I presume. What a web site providing access to the music has to do with it?
The whole 'buy mp3' idea always have been troubling for me because I can't figure out exactly what I actually buy there. What is it I purchase?
The right to listen for some composition?
The right to listen it in that specific mp3 format ?
The right to listen it more then one time because I have access to the file?
What do I actually possess after the purchase that I didn't possess before?
If it's my property then what is it? Is it a property at all if the usage of it is limited? For instance it belongs to me but somehow there are some limits to play it in my own restaurant, isn't it?
It's all presented as you buy something and it's clear what you buy. But if you are trying to think about it's more and more unclear.
It looks more like some bully simply blocks access to something he got using some leverage over the author then sells you 'unblock' feature while author is stripped away from any rights by the same bully and have no ability to sell it directly to you. Isn't it a case now days of redundant MIM?
Another issue is with how long it is blocked by paywall. The initial idea was how much? 10 years ? 15 years? How come that let's say Beatles are still protected from public? How that even possible and why nobody rises the issue of abusing initial idea?
"Piracy" has been a term of art in the copyright world for over 100 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Copyrightpirates.jpg
> Is it a property at all if the usage of it is limited?
If you buy a copy of a book, you are not eligible to reprint that book and sell it yourself. There are limits on what folks can do with copyrighted works they buy.
It might be worth reading, for instance, about the American concept of first-sale doctrine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
If such 'right' even exist then it belongs to people who wish to make copy of something isn't it?
It's hard to see why how and who on earth is entitled to prohibit to anyone in having right to make a copy as long as a person who makes copy doesn't present such copy as original.
The how and who are easy: the Constitution[0], and the American government.
The why is trickier, but the idea at least is that restricting copies means more people buy the "real" thing, which means more money goes to the owner, and creators are therefore more incentivized to make and copyright things in America.
The idea that copies are supposed to be scarce is an invention of Disney marketing, and I'd argue contrary to the spirit of the law. The stated purpose of copyright is to increase the amount of works on the market (by giving creators some negotiating leverage with publishers), not to make individual copies more valuable. That's just a side effect, one that is supposed to be bounded by limited term lengths[1].
[0] For those wondering, this is also what drove copyright harmonization over the last century. Any difference in law between countries creates an avenue for publishers to find a way to cheat creators. Before the era of international copyright it was quite common for publishers to race creators to foreign markets, since translation was not yet an exclusive right of the creator and most countries did not recognize each other's copyright interests.
[1] Please stop laughing. I know life+70 is practically forever.
In my experience when I was thinking to publish something on phtostock I was presented with automatic contract stripping me from all of my "leverage" and if I disagree? it's their way or highway. Of course I could not agree to that. So experience was rather short as you might guess and no live person was even involved on their behalf.
So in my experience it seems that you need some other "leverage" to force publishers to negotiate with creators.
I wasn't talking about 'selling copies'. I was talking about right of making copies. Selling copies is something else I think.
From the same source: [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause
I can see here mention of "exclusive Right".
Can't see there man in the middle having exclusive Right though who also allowed to strip all the rights from the Authors and Inventors. Can't see there any "copyright". Can't see there entitlement "to prohibit to anyone in having right to make a copy". Selling copy is something else. But who can prohibit making copy?
If you read this text you have copied it to your brain from the 'screen copy' of 'memory copy' of 'web response copy' of data stored on server which is 'copy of what I wrote' . There are more stages that I've mentioned of course and each of them produces copy.
>the idea at least is that restricting copies means more people buy the "real" thing
I do not see how current system is in the spirit of [0] and I do not see how current system is even in the spirit of what you've described. It's broken and works for other purposes. Doesn't "promote Progress of Science and useful Arts" it seems.
> Can't see there any "copyright". Can't see there entitlement "to prohibit to anyone in having right to make a copy". Selling copy is something else. But who can prohibit making copy?
17 U.S.C.§106 - https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/106
You also take umbrage with the fact that "copy" is fairly ambiguous. You can find the legal definition of "copy" in 17 U.S.C§101: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/101. It's fairly cut and dry.
It is your choice of course but please try to understand that I was not even trying to be on any rails there as I am questioning the logic and ideas behind the current laws because I observe inconsistency of current laws with initial idea of promoting progress in Science and Arts by giving exclusive Right to Authors and Inventors. Not some man-in-the-middle by the way. Authors and Inventors. Where ever I go I do not see copyright belonging to Authors, all I see is someone else who took all rights from those Authors and Inventors. Even if we accept such exclusive Right I do not see why such exclusive Right should be transferable as it is obviously would be abused and we observe that in reality.
>It's fairly cut and dry.
In the context I've described above while I am thankful to you without any irony for providing useful links to the current laws and definitions I am still more interested about ideas behind them rather then current implementations.
>You also take umbrage with the fact that "copy" is fairly ambiguous.
I would not use word 'umbrage' but when one questioning ideas behind certain definitions every term becomes open for interpretations and the current legal definition is just one of them.
The entire point is to encourage creative endeavors, whether by patents for inventions or by copyright for the arts. The ability to restrict trivial copying has been essential for the advancement of arts & sciences.
So, no, making a copy and giving it to your friend is technically against the law, but in a practical sense, unless you are doing it at scale, it is legal in a practical sense.
That said, the systems of both copyrights and patents are massively forking broken. And abused.
So, the need for overhaul is massive, but to act like it is some alien concept with no possible worth is not helpful to the discussion, merely disingenuous or ignorant.
Since the legal system in the USA (and elsewhere) has "evolved" to consider copyright to be property in most of the same senses as anything else you can own, it follows that copyright can be transferred to others.
You are welcome to disagree with either premise ("no copying of someone else's creation", "right to copy is property") but that's the situation at present, and it's not obviously wrong unless you adopt some philosophical positions that the USA (and most of western Europe) does not (in aggregate) hold.
Speech rights and copy rights are both rights. Great that speech rights are universal in most democratic countries. Awful that copy rights are exclusive.
FTFY
(from wikipedia...)
Copyright infringement is the use of works protected by copyright law without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, such as the right to reproduce, distribute, display or perform the protected work, or to make derivative works
Theft is the taking of another person's property or services without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it.
So in a sense you are right, "greed" is the operative word -- not on the part of people who download, but on the part of the people who benefit most from the copyright system.
So if it's long enough it assumes it's correct? Hard to see logical connection there.
In our power to reconsider false and confusing terminology.
Well... Yes? That's how words work, really. If enough people agree a word means something, then it does.
Another modern example of a word that rapidly loses its meaning is "fascism": these days it is used as a general term for any policy not supported by the person that uses it. BLM fascists, left fascists, ultraright fascists, antifa fascists. On the subreddit about new Apple "Foundation" show someone described the depicted Empire as fascist. Everybody are fascists, especially the US who have fascias everywhere in state imagery!
But all that does it make words mean different things at different points in time, which is still just how words work. The meaning of the word "gay" is pretty different now than what it was, "meat" used to refer to all solid food, not just muscle and organs, "tweeting" is, at this point, more used as a reference to an internet service than to birds.
We didn't get to learn a final and set version of our languages, we just got the current one, they all keep changing nonstop and words changing meaning is just one of the ways in which that happens.
It has precisely zero relation to copyright infringement, and should not be used to denote the it.
Is it? Framing a conversation through word connotation is a very powerful, and oft used, political tool. It isn't necessarily within your power to control it when stronger political and social forces are pushing it in other directions.
Sure, that's a good enough of a descriptivist basis for a definition to be "correct."
I'd wager most folks on here don't see the name "The Pirate Bay" and question what it has to do with literal seafaring scallywags.
You purchased convenience -- not having to deal with filesharing systems that are polluted with various misidentified files, not having to try to figure out if the thing you are downloading is actually malware (for non-technical users this is often a challenge), not having to correct / create tags for the MP3 (artist/album/etc.), not having to guess at the quality of the audio (sometimes "lossless" actually means "preserved loss from some other format"), etc. For most people the convenience justifies the price.
Raiding and pillaging, from North to South coast
We steal only metal like guns, tanks and toasters!
We melt them all down, and make .. roller coasters!
-anonymous
>What is it I purchase?
Something that's legal according to your region's laws, copyright laws and the EULA. In case of unDRM-ed downloadable files, you most likely purchase the right for personal enjoyment or private screening of the media contained within the files, and of course the store often provides the files themselves too.
As you noted, the legal part is often murky. In case of Hungary, you're permitted for example to back up your legally owned media, so you can legally rip your CDs for yourself. But this is not true for all regions.
The copyright of the composition, the right the redistribute, or usage in a commercial environment is most often excluded when you just "buy and mp3". These are special cases where you need a different legal instrument, like a contract or license, and to pay way more than €1 per track.
Now, onto the dark patterns. The media industry is rife with this. The first is that often you can read "buying", but it's way more restricted legally, and sometimes, the media itself is crippled with a mechanism that tries to enforce some legality[1] - this would be the DRM. Region locking, unskippable anti-piracy segment on the DVD, files that "stop working" after a while, media that's encrypted from file to display, albums/games disappearing or downgrading from your catalogue, there's a lot. Meanwhile you're often presented with how easy and cheap all this is, and how much in control you are - no you're not. If you feel angry or betrayed, that's because you're realizing the con.
What can you do about this? Pirating is fine as a fuck you to the industry, but the creators of all the enjoyable goodness deserve compensation just like everyone else who does good work. So you can look for ways to support them that's more direct than licensing their music from a streaming giant. Bandcamp[2], for one, is quite excellent towards users and artists alike. And also, there is a lot of people who is not content with the current state of copyright - so many that Wikipedia had to open a page just for this issue[3]. So you're certainly not alone in your questioning.
[0] https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/462700/what-is-t...
After registering the hardware, then making an account with the third party who provides the software, I was able to download a demo version which I should then have been able to unlock into a full version using the serial number and license file provided to me...but this was not the case.
After about an hour of tinkering, restarting, and googling, I decided to try and pirate a copy of the software that I was entitled to the full working version of.
Took about two minutes to download and have it running.
Artists should be seeding high quality files to the torrents themselves, in formats that are signed and include a crypto wallet for sending "donations". Then the playback software just needs to check the signature to ensure you're giving money to the actual creator and not some imposter if you want to throw money their way, through a payment ui the players conveniently make available to you.
There's just no need for the middle-men who make it all miserable, and exploit control of the audience for their own gain via advertising/"recommendations"/propaganda etc. Torrents have fixed the distribution problem, and no consumers are really interested in depriving their favorite artists from making a living. It's just a glaring omission that the torrent system doesn't incorporate a reliable artists compensation circuit, like it's just unfinished.
Also some bands don't want to operate on "donations" and want to set a price for the download. I wonder how that would work to be able to set a price.
Of course you could avoid this by only getting the torrent from the official band's website, but fakes would certainly be a problem.
But it really isn't sufficient for the artist to just stick a wallet address somewhere in files seeded, and hope for the best.
The format needs to formalize support for it, my players need to verify and make that information conveniently accessible to me, preferably in a one-click-to-tip-artist using my configured crypto wallet kind of fashion.
For me this is one of the actual legitimate use cases of cryptocurrency. These microtransaction kind of business models where folks like artists are happy to receive tiny amounts like tips if they can get it repeatedly from all their fans globally, passively, just by having created their art and putting it out there where it's all effectively "long tail" revenue, stacking as they produce more work, ad infinitum.
You got refunded but in my country many sites have implicit rule "Once you purchase it, we can't return it back".
Do they specify what you actually purchase, I can't figure out what is it you purchase in such cases.
I'd have loved to pay but if movie studios (or whoever is responsible for this sh#tshow) will go out of their way to not give me a mp4 or similar device/service independent playable format then I couldn't care less about their loss.
I want to pay for my media. But it want it in English please, with subs. The copyright lobby won’t let me, so I grab torrents. For free.
Same with Formula1. I had a annual subscription to watch races online, in English, until they made some deal with some local broadcaster, meaning I need to sign up to the local broadcasters’ service on terrestrial, cable, or satellite (the ‘90 called, they want their broadcasting model back) and have commentary in $native_language.
- I have disposable income - I’m happy to fork some of this over to the media companies - I consume media on an industrial scale - They refuse to provide a product that is consumable for me
So, thanks, IPTV and torrent sites!
I understand there are some downsides like small creators getting destroyed. But as with any technology we know digital piracy has various advantage. Also music, movies etc offered by torrents can be far reliable because Netflix etc can remove content at any minute according to their wish.
DRM is the main issue in piracy and I hope we can bypass this easily. And I also think many piracy doesn't have any dent on so called big producers. They are just mad that they can't suck few bucks from poor people.
Whereas the music industry and even worse, the movie industry, still have their heads up their arses and are losing hundreds of billions of dollars if they just provided a single platform where everything is available to stream, everywhere in the world, with no restriction but a single monthly fee.
DRM is a problem, but the need to subscribe to a dozen different services to have access to most, but not all, media, is the biggest issue.
I haven't downloaded a video game since the early 2010s, I have given Valve thousands of dollars since, and I will keep paying for my torrenting VPN for music and movies for the foreseeable future. Long live The Pirate Bay.
Streaming and buying music is _mostly_ OK nowadays, I've included it for sake of argument, the real problem lies with the movie industry.
I don’t play games, I still spent 5$ (I think) on the game, just because he is an impressive individual and I wanted to do my part so he stays that way.
Companies underestimate how much love fans have for creators, when they’re sincere and their work is very good. The only way companies know to make money is treat their users like shit, use lawyers all the time etc etc
Stardew Valley is a load of fun and very much built with non-gamers in mind. It's pretty accessible (though you may want to keep the wiki handy). It's also really relaxing. You should try it out, you might really enjoy it.
I don't think it's because of relative value of money.
The thing with double standards is that there's just so many to choose from!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walt_Disney_Company#1923%E...
All they have to do is ask the public for money to make the next [say] Mad Max, Riddick, Startrek, Batman, etc etc
If the public doesn't want a new Startrek movie funding will be insufficient. It might have to happen on a smaller budget, not at all or simply have to wait until funds are sufficient.
New things (not sequels) can be done/advertised on the reputation of the studio, director, actors etc etc
I pay for production, I pay in advance for a cinema ticket, I get a digital download some months later.
Whatever copying happens after that is pure promotion.
I, for example, dislike Take Two's way of intimidating modders so I'm trying to avoid giving them money.
Quite the opposite, one of the very few scientific articles on the topic piracy has been found to help small-mid level artists (but hurt big artists), explanation here:
https://torrentfreak.com/piracy-can-help-music-sales-of-many...
For instance and as said in the article artists like Ed Sheeran became popular thanks to piracy among college students.
The European Commission ordered a study on piracy, and not liking the conclusion hid its results for two years. It was only discovered when a part that did show that some piracy hurts sales was quoted, allowing people to dig into the full report and finding that piracy helped games, was neutral on books and music, and was bad for movies:
https://www.newsweek.com/secret-piracy-study-european-union-...
Do they? I was vaguely under the impression that the overwhelming majority of people pirating stuff wouldn't have paid, and that whenever actual studies are run they show piracy benefiting the original creators.
[0] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/09/eu-study-finds-piracy...
Now it's gone, and who knows how much music has been lost to time as a result.
However I gotta say, their content and organization was better than any music library (legal included) that I've ever seen. It is truly a shame that we lost it so the labels thought they could make more money. I would guess that humanity might have lost some rare lossless records.
That lawyer is probably the person who has made the most money off of TPB. Of course they don't regret it.
It was helpful for me to meet and talk with people who have the opposite opinion and perspective of me. Not because we changed each other’s minds (my mind wasn’t changed), but because I saw that these were people who really thought they were protecting and fighting for the rights and protections of artists and creators. As I said, it didn’t change my opinion about how misguided and ultimately harmful those fights have been (especially towards the parties they want to protect), but I did at least see that not all of them are evil boogeyman who just want to get money.
They have tons of money, they’re highly educated, well connected individuals, are they not? All they have to do is spend one Saturday reading up. With the money they have, they can even hire researchers to do some original research for them. My guess is that they don’t want to know. Money has a way of suppressing one’s good side.
I am having a hard time sympathizing with these lawyers. They go after students, poor people for downloading a song or two. They’re the reason for the sorry state of copyright laws
Belief in yourself and your cause is irrelevant. Most people have that regardless of what they do.
Doesn’t mean they are evil, just that they’re paid enough to set aside any moral concerns they have.
1. If you disagree with the base assumptions of copyright, you are going to misunderstand the law and fail your LSAT/bar exam/etc. You will be blinded by "it's just to keep big companies afloat" to notice the actual rules of things like fair use.
2. If you get a law license but disagree with the base assumptions of the law, you are going to be at a financial disadvantage by refusing to represent clients whose politics disagrees with yours.[0]
3. If you choose to represent copyright defendants, you can only do so to the extent that there is a legal argument that they can make. It is illegal for a lawyer to aid a client in the commission of a crime... and if your legal career is based around the idea that something shouldn't be a crime, then you will need to hold your tongue and pick your battles a lot.
4. If you somehow jump through those hoops and competently represent clients... you probably have sacrificed on your "abolish copyright" ideology a fair bit.
[0] Remember that at this point you are probably deep in student debt - your legal career is predicated on you paying back your loans by charging your clients lots of money.
I used to work as a software developer for a banking startup, and a lot of emphasis was placed on things like KYC, AML and "compliance", whatever that is.
Fundamentally, I hated all those things with passion (including how they force everyone to use a bank to transact - and here I am working for a bank), because I don't believe they any institution or government should be forcibly gatekeeping and spying upon anyone's transactions.
It's really hard to work at a place that contradicts your own convictions. When I was fired, it was a relief.
Maybe a bit of a truism, but it is a popular quote for a reason
Blaming lawyers for the state of copyright laws is doing a huge service to the legislators that pass them and the lobbyists who write them.
> the lawyers honestly think they are doing the right thing
Reminds me of:
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” - Upton Sinclair
Look at Kim Dotcom / Mega Upload for an example of who the big winners are in the piracy space. Some of it is big business, so it's easy to see the lawyers' side. I'd still consider myself pro piracy because it creates a floor in terms of how bad big companies can treat us, but there are some participants that deserve to be chased by lawyers.
The argument against copyright maximalism should not be made on the basis that "nice" pirate sites can exist - in fact, you should advocate for copyright reform or reduction on the basis of the least tolerable, most scummy site that should be allowed to exist.
[0] insert any other non-scummy pirate site here
I think the truly worst people alive right now are really, really fucking charming and 'nice' to have dinner with in a fancy hotel - they get plenty of practice - but if kindly confronted with undeniable evidence of their harms they would immediately rationalize their actions with bullshit, and get as far from you as possible.
> but if kindly confronted with undeniable evidence of their harms they would immediately rationalize their actions with bullshit, and get as far from you as possible.
This is not meant to excuse that response, but I do want to point out that it is the rational and "easy" path of response. When people make ideas the core of their personality and survival, threats to those ideas are now personal threats. The path of coming to challenge and change those ideas is a hard road in most cases. It takes a very strong and brave person to change their mind on a core belief.
The better way IMO to approach it is to ensure people don't get caught in the position in the first place. Don't make beliefs the center of yourself, make values the center, and choose them carefully and with nuance. It allows you to change course on beliefs or ideas with much less pain and personal internal sacrifice. That needs to start early though, way before anyone at that table sat down for their meal. It's an education issue, an early one at that.
I mentioned nutmeg intentionally. 10g of nutmeg will cause quite like LSD states, and I'm not sure why, but no one anywhere considers nutmeg a drug. I'm also not sure how this was discovered as consuming even half a gram of nutmeg would be a pretty amazing feat.
>A drug is any chemical substance that causes a change in an organism's physiology or psychology when consumed.
So yes, both nutmeg and pot are plants and drugs when consumed with the right dosage. Nobody considers nutmeg a drug as it's rarely used as one in their presence.
And it was probably discovered when nutmeg was used for food preservation.
I’m thankful that I followed the arguments and merits of both sides.
If I was in high school now, I don’t think I would be as lucky as to get to be apart of good faith arguments. Instead, I might end up believing in Qnon.
I’m so thankful that the original web was much more pure, good hearted than what it has become today.
Now we have these massive scale social networks who attract all the absolute worst scum of the earth, botnets, etc. The companies running these networks are super massive and formed connections to political parties and financial interests.
The saddest thing is we could all just decide to get off these massive networks and use the smaller ones again, but the genie is out of the bottle and a critical mass of people can’t be convinced to leave the new networks.
The social networks of today are to the world what the "Pravda" newspaper was to the Eastern Bloc in the 20th century. A weapon of mass subversion. (Oh the magnitude of trolling and shade in the name of that newspaper... Nothing in the past 100 years has surpassed that!)
Also, every hacker online pre-facebook realized that it wouldn't take that much effort to do social engineering on a mass scale, but there was a brief period before any large organizations actually got involved and started doing it.
I think we got a glimpse of something special in the early internet, and I think we can build toward that again.
I mean, you are writing on HN, a specialized community of practice which is the polar opposite from massive social media sites like Facebook or Twitter. And if HN is not exclusive enough for you, there is Lobsters where you need an invite to even post or comment. To me, these dynamics are pretty close to what went on on the "early internet" pre social media. Though it would be nice if federation standards were more widely adopted, to enable optional interop across sites.
"If it’s in the public interest, the Commonwealth can intervene in these cases on the side of the defamed person against the social media company. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the government would proactively search for such cases to intervene in."
Years of cyberbullying didn't spur the government into action. A few choice tweets about politicians did. Though they'll say this is about protecting kids etc
It's politically incorrect, but not as bad as Facebook in terms of damage to society.
I say psyop because it was essentially boomer catnip. “Good guys are in control” “sit back and do nothing, we have them right where we want them” “it’s all going according to plan” etc etc.
As far as psyops go it was wildly successful, posting cryptic messages anyone following the news heavily would know then “reveal” them later as proof. This manufactured false credibility as an insider, then their “instructions” were to essentially sit back and do nothing while the deep state was taken town for you.
They also sprinkled in religious references to further appeal to evangelical boomers, again playing off the “X will save me, I don’t need to get off my butt and do anything” angle.
I say all this because the overwhelming consensus among the crowd most associate with Q (center right to far right) is that Trump was a traitor and Q was a tool to keep his more radical fans from doing anything during his term.
So I would be happy if we were at least able to legally download things you can't really find "officially" because too few people care and nobody sells it.
Not doing this creates memory holes for artistic content. TV shows from decades ago with unclear rights ownership will be gone, disappeared.
If a company creates something, that does not happen in a vacuum, it requires the support of a whole society of people to happen.
The value created should ideally be for the whole society to use.
If a company can't even be bothered to sell it, or goes out of business, then that work that the whole of society did, was wasted. The historical record, which belongs to everyone, becomes incomplete.
I don't think that's right and in my opinion they should then forgo their claim to it.
Our historical record should not be at the whim of bean counters.
I'm sure many years from now we'll be thankful that we can find 'obscure' movies and TV shows from the early 2000/10/20s etc
The 2013 TPB documentary - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTOKXCEwo_8
> “Even though it was the American film companies that paid for my work, that work benefited all the authors and copyright holders. This is a very important but often forgotten aspect,” Wadsted told M3.
It really didn't benefit film companies tho, it exposed TPB to probably 100's of millions of people who didn't know about it previously. I wouldn't be surprised if more people know how to pirate content as a result.
I feel absolutely justified employing whatever technological means available to bring equality and democratization to digital arts. I'm a political pirate.
Everything went well for ten years, when suddenly my magazines stopped magically appearing on the Kindle each month. It turned out that the WiFi in my Kindle was broken. Not to worry, I'll just download the mag and sideload via USB.
But it is impossible to select recent editions on the Amazon website. It refuses to show any mags for this year.
Even if I bought a new Kindle, I still couldn't schedule my unread magazines for download.
So I tried to contact Amazon. It is now impossible to talk to Amazon by email. Only possibility is to talk via Chat. But after three very long sessions on Chat (last one being 8 hours long) I got absolutely nowhere.
The people on Chat simply couldn't understand what I was trying to tell them. And it was impossible to send them a screen shot which showed the problem (they no longer have email).
In the process they insisted on cancelling my account and starting a new one, which of course resulted in my losing ten years worth of magazines. However I persisted. After many times asking for the supervisor, they eventually agreed to send my report to "the technical people". And of course after a week or two I have I heard nothing back.
It's pretty obvious that this blocking of downloads is because various sites have managed to crack the Kindle DRM. But the infuriating thing is that the Amazon Web page (and the Chat operators) are not aware that it's been blocked.
Eventually I ran out of patience and cancelled all of my Amazon subscriptions.
In the past I spent a LOT of money on Amazon, but no more. Goodbye Amazon forever.
I have used imgur many times for sharing screenshots.
Someone forgets how legacy copyright industry fights tooth and nail against any innovation, until they realize it's futile and then they try to start using technology instead of fighting it. This hasn't changed a bit. They literally do it every step of the way trying to slow progress down for the sake of their obsession with control.
In the 1990s and early 2000 there was much discussion around copyright. Specifically how much the fan base contributed to the success of a song. How much does each song borrow from others.
In the teens, many streaming services came about, people could legally listen to almost anything they wanted on Youtube. The conversation died down. 'Algorithms' helped to police Youtube.
What's going to be the next stage? I think just fatique with the whole industry. Maybe cancel copyright for authors that are found to be abusers?
This is false. Although, if someone wants to argue that other piracy services were more influential in breaking the old DRM systems, I will debate it with you.
Is screen capture possible on windows/mac?
I'm still grateful for the sysops of tpb and more importantly, Mininova for providing me with endless hours of entertainment before I had the means to stay in a private tracker.
The biggest being the introduction to all the content that was so far out of reach for me, as a young kid. I could get vintage games that were long out of sale in retail stores (this was before mass GOG and Steam game availability), and conveniently sized movies by aXXO.
Another memory was when they switched to legal-only content, creative commons stuff. Logging in one day and I had to double check why there was almost nothing "mainstream" present anymore. Introduced me to the concept of torrenting as a convenient, reliable method of file sharing, rather than just for getting stuff for free (illegally).
And a final present memory is seeing fudged peer numbers, which I'm so glad I have a screenshot securing this memory, and securing this time in history of the web.
It's simpler to do anything else than putting a lot of effort figuring out when and where to watch something.
DRM is a minor annoyance and nothing more.
DRM is about killing the second hand market. About keeping the market segmentation between countries. About killing fair use.
It has been very succesful in all of this.
I agree it's totally useless. Just takes one person to record the output and it's done.
If we can't disable it somehow, we'll switch operating systems.
Keep in mind that we're still seeing jailbreaks for iPhones after all these years.
I admire your optimism. Unfortunately, once Apple has shown it is possible to prevent the playing of unlicensed copyrighted works, Windows and Android will have to match this or be treated as second-class platforms by the media industries.
Very few people will be willing to buy dedicated Linux computers (with custom Secure Boot keys) for watching torrented videos, and such devices will then become subject to more and more regulations, like having to pay an annual fee to the government.
Their own pro grade software that is paid for (logic, final cut) is always cracked basically day 1 of release and they've never made any attempt to tighten up authentication
I strongly suspect DRM is not a way to stop someone but a security theatre serving as way to make money off the licensing and hardware. That’s why the industry does and always will require it - not because they’re stupid to believe it protects something (though it nominally does) but simply because it greases their other hand.
Also, yeah, it kills the second hand market.
1. Sharing is hard. Plenty of people legally purchase a movie, and then want to give it to their friends; DRM makes that difficult and thus generates at least some additional sales.
2. Forced obsolescence -- people who buy media legally can be forced to buy it again and again every time they buy a new entertainment device.
3. Creative business models -- in a world without DRM, you could not offer "rental" downloads, "streaming" would just be a form of "downloading," and the industry could not offer special "deals" like "family" passes that permit more than one account holder to view a purchased movie. All of these are ways to make money that could not happen in a world without DRM.
Yes, DRM is always broken after enough time -- that is not as much of a problem as you might expect. As long as the time between a DRM system being deployed and being broken is long enough that the industry makes back more than the cost of developing the DRM system, the system worked. Developing new DRM systems from time to time is just the cost of doing business, not really a problem for anyone in the industry, and as you point out it may even work to the benefit of certain participants.
I am not a big fan of DRM (in fact, I would argue that the entire movie industry needs to rethink its business model, embrace the true power of file sharing as a means of distributing movies and focusing more on using movies as a draw or value-add for other lines of business), but it is not as if the movie industry executives are a bunch of buffoons who continue to waste their money after decades of broken DRM. If DRM was not adding to the industry's profits they would have stopped bothering with it -- see e.g. the music industry, which has a somewhat different business model and which has largely given up on their DRM dreams.
Not even from a piracy standpoint, just a "I want to play this after the server/company shuts down" standpoint.
This isn't even remotely true.
Almost every game seems to have an online element and won't run at all if you aren't on the latest version.
Huh?! You can just buy a sound card or even a DAC for very little.
Now though, things are becoming so fragmented again that I think it’ll pick up. Most people are already sharing accounts to get around it partly.
It's food for a person's soul. Multiplied a million times. The world is definitely made better.
Compare that good with the good of "the owner gets paid".
Pirating is clearly the much greater good. Pirating is a moral necessity.
And yes, this includes publishers and content providers, they’re providing something of value too.
Piracy serves an important role for those people.
The founders come across as very arrogant, making childish arguments and apparently unaware of how modern society in which they live functions. Also lots of F words.
I was put off.
They are not native English speakers. Learning english from American pop-culture makes you swear alot.
http://njallalafimoej5i4eg7vlnqjvmb6zhdh27qxcatdn647jtwwwui3...
how so?