Comment by ozim
6 days ago
DMCA letter sounds like small potatoes when we talk about letting random people write stuff to your disk space and using your bandwidth.
6 days ago
DMCA letter sounds like small potatoes when we talk about letting random people write stuff to your disk space and using your bandwidth.
Can you elaborate on what big potatoes you're seeing? Genuinely asking. The Android app, for example, writes everything to the app's storage, and runs only when your phone is plugged-in and is connected to wifi. To me that generally means "when I'm sleeping". What's the big potato in this scenario?
That is a hell of a lot of trust that people are putting in to download and upload unknown files.
The risks that you download and start spreading malware or worse CSAM. You really don’t want that sitting on your disk.
Admittedly the risks is lower if the list is coming from Annas Archive, but this is still putting a lot of trust in an external list.
Much better off doing this manually, finding the list of what you want to seed and vetting that list yourself.
The torrents are coming directly from Anna's Archive torrents list generator, which suggests their torrents based on how rare their content is. There's currently 177TB of data that is only seeded by 4 computers around the world, which I personally find worrisome.
People seem to be very concerned, but putting aside the legal risks (which I accept - don't use this if you're in one of the ~10 countries it could get you in troubles for), I don't really get it. The idea is to support Anna's Archive. If you do not trust the project, why support it? Levin is meant for people that want to support Anna's Archive, and my assumption was that this implies some kind of trust in their torrents.
Edit: just adding that "finding the list of what you want to seed and vetting that list yourself" is extremely not practical and not won't really help anyone. Torrents work because we're all seeding the same torrents. If I'd seed a torrent of my 5 favorite books and you seed a torrent of your 5 books, our torrents will forever have 1 seeder each. And good luck manually vetting all the files in one AA torrent. I am planning to let people manually add/remove torrents from Levin, but I highly suspect it will be used by very, very few.
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CSAM is not something to scare people away. In P2P networks like Perfect Dark there are TBs of CSAM sitting in everyone's disks and we just get along with them.
Do you ever download things you didn't upload? How do you know none of them are CSAM? Aren't you scared?
I'm seeding the Epstein files right now.
They hated him because he told the truth moment.
Any iOS or Android app could in fact, download arbitrary content without you noticing, but corporations conditioned people to only raise alarms on torrents and other community efforts.
Yes. As far as I know, with WebRTC I can make your device share certain files with peers simply by you visiting my website.
Not only downloading, but also uploading. Your ISP (in America) has a policy about how many DMCA strikes you get before they disable your internet permanently.
Would you be willing to let me mail a package to your house, to hold for me? It would be placed in your house at night, while you're sleeping.
These are beautiful analogies, but I'd appreciate an answer my original question. Your package can explode, these torrents cannot (as far as I am aware). If you want to send me a CD to store at my house, feel free to email me.
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By that logic no app should allow you to store any data whatsoever on their servers. Because your data might explode.
Yes, if I know who you are and you have a list of what you might send. Anna’s Archive’s (who) content is well defined (what).
japanese people have been doing this with their darknets for decades and they are fine
There are Japanese-specific darknet networks (using different technology?) that have existed for decades, or are you referring to Japanese language content on Tor, etc.?
im referring to WinNY, Share, Perfect Dark and the likes which work kind of like FreeNet with their own twists
This is also known as "Hosting" which, I found amusing.
Hosting without section 230 protections is "Distributing" whatever content you've (un)wittingly downloaded that's deemed illegal.
we are talking about books. books. illegal. Saint Leibowitz ora pro nobis.
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Allowing anonymous people to host files on your server is a great way to collect (and distribute!) illegal porn, stolen data, stolen software, police warrants, etc...
Every useful tool is useful for bad things.
Everything with the power to protect the innocent, also has exactly the same power to protect the guilty. The two facets are inseperable.
Observing only the negative side, or only the positive side, is a null argument. The fact that a tool can be used for bad is exactly cancelled out by the fact that it can be used for good. Neither is a valid basis for any kind of policy.
Except that on balance, it's better for everyone that we have tools and capabilities and knowledge than not.
It's better that we have knowledge of say, poisons, than not, even though some people apply the knowledge to do harm.
This manifests in at least a couple different dimensions. The simplest one: there are more good or neutral people using knowledge and tools for good things than not. A less direct way: It's better for you to have options to help yourself and others deal with problems and meet needs than not.
Even if someone can use a tool against you, you are still better off having a lot of useful tools at your disposal in general than not, including to counter the one going against you, which zeros that out, and then also to deal with everything else, which becomes a net positive.
The alternative is to be an animal. Either a wild animal totally at the whims of nature, or worse a voluntarily domesticated animal that knows that tools exist, but has abdicated all responsibility for their own welfare to some farmer claiming to take care of them. And you still have the exact same bad guy problem, only now without any ability to deal with it.
Acting like the bad side of a useful thing is the only side, or even the most important side, is simple bad math.
Aside from any other unflattering quality that results in fear of any obvious easily identified harm being one's highest priority that outweighs all other considerations.
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And yet, Dropbox exists