What’s up today? (Part 1)

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Not completely worthless. Still usable as toy. Or for heating (see Pablo Escobar).

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You still can’t do anything with Bitcoin but it is leaking into everyday consciousness.

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7 posts were merged into an existing topic: What’s wrong with Bitcoin, and can it be improved?

A post was merged into an existing topic: What’s wrong with Bitcoin, and can it be improved?

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They got 0.01% of the total votes, but… in absolute numbers 3 times more than 4 years ago. So progress is being made :slightly_smiling_face:

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Precursor | Crowd Supply just saw that Bunnie, one of the guys behind the novena open laptops a few years ago, just crowdsourced succesfully an open software and hardware phone thing called Precursor running on risc-V. Rust gets a special mention in the 2 min video there at the top describing the project. Looks amazing. Possible loyal little Earners in a few years these gadgets :slight_smile:

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The Sci-Hub website says it “removes all barriers” to science.

It offers open access to more than 85 million scientific papers and claims that copyright laws should be abolished and that such material should be “knowledge to all”.

It describes itself as “the first pirate website in the world to provide mass and public access to tens of millions of research papers”.

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I actually worked for a company which hosted and published various scientific journals. Many of these had their data pushed onto this site. I remember the questions being asked of how they could be stopped/blocked, whether it was due to hacking, etc. It wasn’t. It was due to some users with accounts, downloading them, then uploading them.

Now, you could argue that these accounts were being compromised, then used by the hackers to upload the papers. I don’t remember this being a suspicion at the time, though. It seemed more likely that there were some folks that were sympathetic with freeing this data for everyone, for the good of science.

Reflecting on this now, it has parallels with Safe Network shared private data. As soon as someone has access to it, they can take copies, upload them elsewhere, etc.

“Students should be aware that accessing such websites is illegal, as it hosts stolen intellectual property,” said Det Insp Kevin Ives.

Yes, that approach worked well for stopping Napster… :rofl:

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Actually accessing the website to view is not illegal under copyright law. It is the uploading that is a criminal offence (illegal). The viewing is a civil case and not illegal. So much for the police being truthful in this case.

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Didn’t they go after downloaders with napster too though?

I must admit though, it does seem like pretty shaky ground. How can a consumer know whether they can or can’t see it? Can they even unsee it, if they just viewed it?

:thinking: alsorts of dissonance follows copyright interest… a clear indication that there’s something wrong with the premise.

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100% … ideas are not property in my view. If you want exclusive use of an idea, then keep it a secret.

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Software is actually shifting more and more to this perspective. Does it stop software being written? No, but it changes how it is funded. People often sell the service of building the software instead.

Some people are very attached to the idea of copyright though. I do get that. It can feel like theft, when your idea/work is copied by another for profit. On the flip side monopolising an idea for profit doesn’t seem that fair on others either.

Maybe we just need to move on from the concept.

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I don’t mind if someone want to keep a secret and monopolize what they discovered … but if it leaks out, oh well.

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Not the police. You see copyright is divided into 2 parts with what you are not supposed to do.

  1. Those who “perform” or make available the content owned by another, and
  2. Those who consume content owned by another and not being provided through an authorised means/media.

For those who “perform” or make available (eg upload, torrent to others) copyrighted content is handled by the criminal justice system. It is against the law in other words. Still not stealing as the copyright work has not been removed from the authorised “person’s” possession. The police can arrest and/or take the person to court to be convicted of a crime.

For those who consume/possess copyrighted material have violated the rights bestowed by copyright legislation and have committed a civil violation. The copyright owner can take the person to civil court and demand damages to be paid. The police cannot take any action unless there is something the court orders, like to grab the person to appear.

For napster the uploaders (most who use it initially and many after) had criminal action against them and the media companies tried to civilly get monies from those listening to the material. I cannot remember the outcomes as I never used napster or cared too at the time.

The reason torrents get such a hard time is by default people using it are also uploading and it becomes easy for the media companies to go after them because they can use the criminal justice system to get the conviction and damages is real easy to get afterwards if they want.

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That’s a great post, @neo. Thanks!

I hadn’t realised it was so nuanced, but it makes a lot of sense.

So, we should consider the impact of the above on safe network.

  1. We know that users will be able to upload data anonymously, which will make it hard for authorities to take action.
  2. We know that farmers will have no knowledge of what they are hosting. Indeed it will be impossible for them to find out. This also protects farmers.
  3. We know that retrieving data will also beanonymous, so consumers are protected against civil action.
  4. We know the platform will not have a kill switch and will be very difficult to block, protecting the network itself.
  5. The developers have no control over what any of the above do. They just build the infrastructure. Those building roads don’t get arrested when a criminal drives on them.

I wonder who they will go after first? I wonder if they will get anything to stick?

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Like they do with torrents (or used to do) and that is pay big dollars to private investigators.

My thought is they will try and find some connection of the uploader to some real world situation. Maybe in a forum someone will say “I just uploaded such-n-such” and from there they will try and unravel the users identification.

Basically they will trace people by them making mistakes or being loose with their tongues. Say someone uploads a bunch of media and brags about it, or someone asks how they can get something and the uploader responds in a way that reveals they did it.

You are right though that if people are sensible then media will be as safe as whistle blowers material they upload.

When i read the copyright act back in the 70’s it was a case that a person stopped at lights blasting their latest cassette album causing the bystanders to enjoy the music as well, that they were also considered “performing” the work and thus criminals.

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