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Ad blocking is under attack

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Re: Ad blocking is under attack

#401

Post by khedoros1 »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #199
jrochkind1 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DMCA is not the appropriate tool for this. Filing a DMCA takedown notice when you know that there is not any copyright infringement going on in the document you are asking to be taken down is a misuse of the DMCA, and an entity filing such a takedown can be liable for any monetary damages or attorney fess of the other party. Although I don't know that's ever happened, it's in the law as a penalty for intentional misu…

> this is not legal advice Funny how this disclaimer is only found besides legal advice. Really, you should not have to write this. ("I am not a lawyer" is more reasonable, though.)

From what I understand, "legal advice" has a legal meaning, basically requiring it to come from your lawyer, and implying an attorney-client relationship. People want to be clear that they aren't a lawyer, and that they aren't attempting to practice law by offering someone else Legal Advice. Instead, it's more like Uncle Fred saying "You should sue the guy!"

Re: Ad blocking is under attack

#402

Post by sorokod »

allemagne wrote: post #329
exabrial wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is very naive to think the current Republican congress is anything different or new The Democrats are doing now what the Republicans did for the last 8 years. And I imagine in 7 years the opposite will happen.

The Republicans control congress and the presidency. With some exceptions, Republicans don't need a single Democratic vote to pass legislation.

Don't think it's accurate to say that the Republicans (or indeed anyone else) controls the presidency

Re: Ad blocking is under attack

#403

Post by hmage »

rad_gruchalski wrote: post #340
nilved wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then they would purge it from the repo. In fact, it's questionably the case that they have abided by the DMCA order, for the very reason that it still exists in the repo history. As far as I know, DMCA takedowns normally lead to closing the entire repo.

How about don't host the code at a location which has such hostile laws?

That actually made me think -- is there such location?

Re: Ad blocking is under attack

#404

Post by jethro_tell »

brador wrote: post #399
jethro_tell wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what would block chain give that git wouldn't? Wouldn't anyone beable to remove a domain or add a domain.

Permanence. The lists would be blockchain addresses that you compile locally into the blocking list.

Perminance is not a great thing for a blacklist. Spamand ads is complicated stuff. There are false positives, and abuse.

Re: Ad blocking is under attack

#406

Post by tyingq »

dschep wrote: post #366
tyingq wrote: post #20

Just encode the list of urls with htmlentities, base64, rot13, whatever. Then the DMCA can't be used to attack it. Edit: Disagree? Please comment. It's attackable via the DMCA because the word/brand is in the file in it's copyrighted form. If you encode it such that it isn't in that form, it's protected from that approach.

How would encoding help? It's already encoded! That repo contains the bits: 0b11001100b11101010b11011100b11000110b11101000b11010010b11011110b11011100b11000010b11011000b11000110b11011000b11000010b11011010b1011100b11000110b11011110b1101101 which is the ASCII _encoding_ of the forbidden string. Just because these bits are an EBCDIC cp500 encoding of that string doesn't make it less forbidden than an ASCII encoding: 0b10…

Because of the light touch string matching that providers do before complying with a frivolous DMCA request. Most will deny the request if they dont see "the text".

And reduced discoverability that your url is on my page in the first place. Even though a url isn't something you can copyright.

Re: Ad blocking is under attack

#407

Post by allemagne »

kuschku wrote: post #345
allemagne wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The unfortunate truth is that there are mostly only much more authoritarian countries to fill any leadership void left by the US. As flawed as it is, and as flawed as Trump is, European countries can only step up so much to keep liberal democratic societies as the global ideal.

Maybe it could also help Europe to unify better. I'm certainly hopeful.

My worry is that the current regimes of Russia and China are on the political upswing faster than the European experiment and struggling or young democracies in the developing world can stand the test of time.

Enthusiastic participation by America in upholding the idea of liberal democracy (even when it's imperfectly executed) can tip the scales.

The way that happens is by the head of the government reversing course as smoothly as possible from admiring and praising autocratic regimes to giving hope and comfort to democratic allies. Whether it's President Trump, Pence, or fucking Mark Zuckerberg doesn't make too much of a difference in that regard.

Re: Ad blocking is under attack

#408

Post by tyingq »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #342
tyingq wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not, the filer of the DMCA is. How else could just a uri being on a page cause a DMCA takedown of a page? That's what happened...they filed a DMCA because the text " http://whatever" was on a github page. Which sounds a lot like meaning trademark, but saying copyright. That's why I don't consider this underhanded. As you mention, it's not copyrighted in the first place. Obscuring it is just closing the loophole t…

The project maintainer wanted to take it down. He has gone on record saying that the url shouldn't have been there in the first place, regardless of the DMCA. If you put an encrypted blob on each line instead of a plaintext url, the DMCA notice will contain "My copyrighted work appears at which decrypts to when using ." It's exactly the same as the original claim. If you feel they're not technically sophisticated eno…

In practice that "when using" stuff doesn't work. The DMCA request is denied by most providers if they can't see "the text in question".

This is from experience. Scrapers that change one or two words in a long passage of text getting away with it because it doesn't match. Or very lightly cropping 1000's of original photos. I will cede that it depends on the provider. Google and many others do some rudimentary checking for sanity before allowing a DMCA request. They would never have passed this one, where just a short piece of text was claimed as infringing.

Re: Ad blocking is under attack

#409

Post by jethro_tell »

stale2002 wrote: post #330
jethro_tell wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what would block chain give that git wouldn't? Wouldn't anyone beable to remove a domain or add a domain.

No, you just have a hash of the "official" version of the list. And when the list needs to be updated, the person with the private key publishes a new list again. The advantage of using the bitcoin blockchain, for example, is that it can't be censored. DMCA trolls now have to go after every single bitcoin company in the world, to stop them from "hosting" the copyrighted work.

Why would they not go after the guy with the private key? Any way he can escape that so could git.

Re: Ad blocking is under attack

#410

Post by rad_gruchalski »

hmage wrote: post #403
rad_gruchalski wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about don't host the code at a location which has such hostile laws?

That actually made me think -- is there such location?

This is a good question. At least at a location where the US does not have an immediate jurisdiction. It's kinda lame, really, that the whole world has to bend over because all of these services are right there in the US. Make them work, at least. Germany, Sweden come to mind.

*edit: removed a redundant word

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