Winning back the Internet by building our own • Hacker News Board

Re: Winning back the Internet by building our own

#131

Post by castlecrasher2 » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 3:13 PM UTC

anhner wrote: post #107

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I have a bike and you steal it from me, you are depriving me of the use of that bicycle. That's what makes it theft. Let me give you back your analogy with a dose of reality: When I make a living by selling bikes, and you steal it from me, you are depriving me of my time and energy and money spent to maintain my business. That's what makes it theft.

If you make a living selling bikes, and I make an exact copy of your bike WITHOUT taking the one you have just made, am I still stealing from you?

Copy or not, you're willfully depriving the company of their revenue. I don't much like how the digital landscape has played out in terms of ownership, but pretending that torrenting a copy of a movie means you didn't steal it ignores the obvious.

Re: Winning back the Internet by building our own

#132

Post by zepto » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 3:32 PM UTC

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #68

cortesoft wrote: post #8

This article basically describes how the current internet was created.... why would this new internet end up any different? You can't expect every person to be skilled enough (and with the time and desire) to be their own network administrator, so someone will have to run the network for those people... and they will need to be compensated for that work... and some people will be really good at running that network,…

>why would this new internet end up any different? I think the main advantage we have today is the hindsight of the past 25+ years. >What would be different this time around if we started from scratch? I think instead of one big Internet we'd build a bunch of smaller, trusted intranets, and provide controlled access via something like a web-of-trust system. >You can't expect every person to be skilled enough (and wit…

I essentially agree with you but there is a missing piece to this.

There are food reasons people get tired of supporting their tribe or family’s IT infrastructure:

1. What we are supporting is often badly designed for individuals and so we’re doing mindless make work to overcome problems cause by corporations. I.e. we are experiencing an externality that a corporation is profiting from.

2. It’s often not reciprocated. Many people have no problem letting someone spend hours fixing a messed up computer, but won’t think to do anything in return. This isn’t universal, I have family members who are very appreciative and will make me dinner, or otherwise value what I’m doing for them, but ‘tribe members’ often just take it for granted that it’s ok for them to just lean on people helplessly for support.

3. Similar to 2. A lot of people keep doing stuff that causes them problems and won’t follow advice that would prevent this. My experience is that it’s the same people who take the help for granted.

I agree that it’s our responsibility to help, but it’s not our responsibility to be enablers.

Re: Winning back the Internet by building our own

#133

Post by zepto » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 3:42 PM UTC

spurgu wrote: post #114

cxf12 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the Trump administrations policy views at whitehouse.gov It's right there in the open.

Do you honestly believe he's written a single line of it himself? Those are the policies written by the party. He doesn't really care as long as people love, support and praise him.

Almost all politicians policy statements are written by other people. This fact isn’t a bad thing.

Whatever your criticisms of Trump are, this isn’t a distinguishing one.

Re: Winning back the Internet by building our own

#134

Post by zepto » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 3:47 PM UTC

spurgu wrote: post #112

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I downvoted you, but I don’t hate you or your ideas. I just disagree with them.

That's not what downvotes are for (unless you're on Reddit). Downvotes are for wrong or misleading comments. If something is against the rules it can be downvoted and flagged. If you disagree, just move on, ignore the comment. If you support/like a comment, upvote it. This is at least how I see it on HN. Edit: Downvoted, sigh.

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

Re: Winning back the Internet by building our own

#135

Post by disambiguation » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 4:50 PM UTC

dnautics wrote: post #62

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #47

Discussing torrents: > people were more easily able to access the things they needed without being forced to ask or pay for permission to have them. Haha. We’re not talking about folks stealing bread to feed their family. We’re talking about people stealing entertainment. There’s a lot wrong with big media corporations: DMCA takedown notice misuse, copyright for life of the artist + 75 years, exploitative contracts,…

> watching movies and show you didn’t pay for is theft When I have a bike and you steal it from me, you are depriving me of the use of that bicycle. That's what makes it theft. There is no deprival, therefore no theft in "watching something you didn't pay for". If you argue "you are depriving the right of the artist to make money" that makes the assumption that the right of an artist to coerce money out of the counte…

> There is no deprival, therefore no theft in "watching something you didn't pay for".

What about depriving someone of a paycheck?

Re: Winning back the Internet by building our own

#136

Post by codethief » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 7:02 PM UTC

bergstromm466 wrote: post #123

codethief wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar project (albeit not production-ready): https://gnunet.org

Have you checked out https://developer.holochain.org ?

Thanks for the link; I hadn't heard of Holochain!

From what I've read, it doesn't seem to be comparable to GNUnet in any way, though. As far as I can tell, it is just another p2p network (or, rather, framework) running on top of the existing TCP/IP stack. However, GNUnet aims to replace the internet stack.

Re: Winning back the Internet by building our own

#137

Post by acuozzo » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 7:35 PM UTC

castlecrasher2 wrote: post #131

anhner wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you make a living selling bikes, and I make an exact copy of your bike WITHOUT taking the one you have just made, am I still stealing from you?

Copy or not, you're willfully depriving the company of their revenue. I don't much like how the digital landscape has played out in terms of ownership, but pretending that torrenting a copy of a movie means you didn't steal it ignores the obvious.

> you're willfully depriving the company of their revenue

POTENTIAL revenue.

You're working from the assumption that all pirates would purchase desired content if it weren't made available for free (illegally).

The alternative you're ignoring is that a pirate can, and often does, choose different content to consume when initially-sought content isn't available to download.

Re: Winning back the Internet by building our own

#138

Post by cocktailpeanuts » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 7:35 PM UTC

humanrebar wrote: post #87

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you eat a loaf of bread, someone else cannot. But if you perform or listen to a song, it's still there for others. OK, that's good for you and the "others", but what about the person who spent time and energy to write the song and perform? Just because it's "still there for others", it's ok to steal it? You are only thinking from the consumer's point of view and neglecting why people produce things of value in t…

Music predates currency systems by quite a bit. I'm sure the art would change quite a bit if charging to listen to a song was no longer practical. Though I'm unconvinced that music would disappear. I can think of many kinds of musicians that do not get compensated per se: small time streamers, buskers, student musicians, garage bands, amateur music clubs, and religious music leaders off the top of my head. To reitera…

> Creators do have legal rights, but that's a whole other set of issues.

This is the main issue at hand that I've been talking about, while you're treating it as a "whole other set of issues".

When Alice spends her time and energy to produce X AND sell it, and Bob finds a way to get it for free against Alice's will, that is called stealing, no matter how you spin it. This is THE problematic part and what I am talking about. Everything else is a non issue and irrelevant when discussing this issue, like you mentioned.

Re: Winning back the Internet by building our own

#139

Post by cocktailpeanuts » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 7:42 PM UTC

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #79

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I have a bike and you steal it from me, you are depriving me of the use of that bicycle. That's what makes it theft. Let me give you back your analogy with a dose of reality: When I make a living by selling bikes, and you steal it from me, you are depriving me of my time and energy and money spent to maintain my business. That's what makes it theft.

> When I make a living by selling bikes, and you steal it from me, you are depriving me of my time and energy and money spent to maintain my business. That's what makes it theft. So your position is that if a company sells something, anything that deprives them of potential income is theft? If I set up a separate bike store down the street and charge less than you, have I stolen from you? How about if I give them awa…

If you set up a separate bike store, steal my bikes--which I spent my own money to create--from my store, and and give it away for free, then yes, you are a thief.

If you set up a separate bike store AND make a bike with your own time and energy and money, and give it away for free, good luck on your business.

p.s.

I am a heavy user of Bittorrent myself and appreciate the technology (I'm sure most people on HN have done illegal downloads), but I at least acknowledge what I am doing is technically stealing. The only reason I'm not going to jail is because it's technically and economically not easy to enforce it. Just because I'm not going to jail doesn't mean it's not stealing. Stealing is stealing.

All I'm saying is people who do illegal downloads should at least understand what they are doing is technically a theft and don't feel so entitled for stealing from other people. I sincerely hope there are better ways to incentivize creators who spend their time and energy producing their intellectual property to the world.

Re: Winning back the Internet by building our own

#140

Post by cocktailpeanuts » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 7:58 PM UTC

acuozzo wrote: post #137

castlecrasher2 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copy or not, you're willfully depriving the company of their revenue. I don't much like how the digital landscape has played out in terms of ownership, but pretending that torrenting a copy of a movie means you didn't steal it ignores the obvious.

> you're willfully depriving the company of their revenue POTENTIAL revenue. You're working from the assumption that all pirates would purchase desired content if it weren't made available for free (illegally). The alternative you're ignoring is that a pirate can, and often does, choose different content to consume when initially-sought content isn't available to download.

These arguments you're making are irrelevant. Even you yourself are using the term "pirate", which implies stealing.

You talk as if "POTENTIAL revenue" is equal to zero, but if you studied economics you would realize that there is such a thing called opportunity cost. It doesn't matter if it's just "potential" revenue, what you are essentially stealing is someone else's opportunity cost.

This is a different story if this person created music and gave it away for free intentionally (because he/she doesn't care, or in an effort to get more audience to monetize in other ways), but if Alice is providing X in exchange for Y, and you take X without giving Alice Y, then it is stealing. Your logic is "I wouldn't have consumed X in the first place if it was not free", and you are right. But at the same time, that does not change the fact that what you did there at the end of the day, no matter how NOT-valuable you see the product, is stealing.

For example, this is like drinking a lemonade from a kid's lemonade stand without paying the $1 price, and saying "You know what, you should be thankful that I even consumed what you created. I would have never drank this worthless beverage for $1, therefore what I just did is not stealing"