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How to become a pirate archivist

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Re: How to become a pirate archivist

#81

Post by imhoguy »

justshowpost wrote: post #45
imhoguy wrote: post #36

As an active hoarder I think there is problem with "6. Distribution: Packaging it up in torrents, announcing it somewhere, getting people to spread it.". I miss a p2p application with torrent packaging and Kademlia like per-file advertising and discovery, where I could point it to my hefty NAS directory of random things and they could be wired to released torrents. This way we could make torrents live much longer, ev…

But why? The current Kademlia implementation built in eMule/aMule does exactly this. Primary data advertised is file name string, there is also a support for several meta fields. Transfer proto sucks, but I don't think it really matters in the case of ultra-rare content.

That `ultra-rare content`, eMule is mess if you need collection of files, ofc you can share ZIP but they get somehow repackaged too often. Torrents nicely group the stuff - it is kind of album.

I've dreamed of federated meta-client which mixes all available p2p networks in a wild and can download missing torrent part from eMule or Soulseek.

Re: How to become a pirate archivist

#82

Post by Fnoord »

michaelt wrote: post #77
incompatible wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably not that uncommon that people working for companies, governments, or criminal organizations can't talk about their work in public. One group I remember in particular are mathematicians working for the NSA, etc., who are not permitted to publish their research, then they watch as other mathematicians rediscover their work and get the credit.

NSA mathematicians still get some recognition though: * Fellow NSA employees, your coworkers and boss * Cash money, my personal favourite form of recognition * Your close friends and trusted loved ones will know the broad outlines of what you're doing. It doesn't make you world-famous but it wouldn't be as lonely as a job that needed total secrecy.

I believe the word we seek is humble. Hopefully the lack of wide, popular recognition leads to humble NSA employees. Obviously, the leaks smeared their reputations. It focusses on the negative outliers. You hear about all the shit they were able to prevent seldomly, if ever.

Re: How to become a pirate archivist

#83

Post by O__________O »

est wrote: post #59
O__________O wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electron star - seems oddly specific, though maybe not spelling it same way you do.

yeah that's a regrettable mistake. It was registered in early days, OPSEC wasn't considered then. The Internet was supposed to connect people not hunting people.

All good, OpSec is hard, which was point I was trying to make, great you take it seriously, just be little more humble. Everyone slips, only matter of time, either in past or future.

Re: How to become a pirate archivist

#84

Post by Stevvo »

throwhn0000001 wrote: post #67
jancsika wrote: post #15

I'm curious how Sci-hub's approach compares to the What.cd/Redacted approach. IIUC Sci-hub has scooped up science docs through a good enough UX that it was able to leverage the goodwill of science folks to upload docs (plus whatever other methods it has used to scoop up docs), and it uses a public blitzkrieg-style distribution mechanism. I.e., I guess if one had a big enough harddrive and a fast enough internet conne…

Redacted's ratio economy is fucked. There's groups of people using high speed seedboxes that grab every new upload to build up ratio in a normal way, if you can call it that. Everyone else is left with scraps, trickling data out to whoever comes later. Or maybe you get lucky and you're the lone seeder, you get a 1:1 copy. You just better hope that was on a 24-Bit FLAC release, given how big they can get. There's many…

Interesting. I haven't used Redacted, but was an avid user of Oink's Pink Palace, the OG music tracker. Ratio requirements were to partially to encourage people to upload stuff. The site was defined by the number (and quality) of uploads it had. If you upload a 24-bit FLAC yourself, you are guaranteed at-least its file-size added to your ratio. Seed-boxes were pretty much accepted as a requirement if you didn't want to upload anything. i.e. each user was expected to contribute in some way.

That said, things are probably different nowadays. In Oink's day everyone was on ADSL at home. Was paying €20 a month for a 100/100 OVH box; today I have 1000/100 at home and can instead spend that €20 on Spotify and Bandcamp.

Re: How to become a pirate archivist

#85

Post by standup »

Having a local copy of an entire ebook archive is one way we can find information without having to use the Internet. Thus we can avoid being subjected to mass surveillance, which is excellent. I wonder if the archive is full text searchable?

Finally an alternative to this Orwellian nightmare we call the Internet. Can't wait to have a copy at home, and there will probably be times where I'll be pulling the plug on the router with relief. And it's one more step towards reducing my Internet usage, thus keeping the government and corporations out of my life.

Re: How to become a pirate archivist

#86

Post by crtasm »

londons_explore wrote: post #70
autoexec wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen people obviously sharing their entire hard drive on P2P platforms, and it's usually been someone's C drive and a massive security issue. I don't think some clients do enough to make it clear to people that they need to be careful not to share more than they intend to or should.

On modern windows, ideally there are no sensitive files accessible to a user program, because everything should be in the secret store/protectedstorage. Obviously a lot of programs still store cached session keys and passwords in plaintext somewhere in your user directory though...

besides that a user's Photos and Documents directories can be rather sensitive

Re: How to become a pirate archivist

#87

Post by ShowalkKama »

eimrine wrote: post #80
jancsika wrote: post #15

I'm curious how Sci-hub's approach compares to the What.cd/Redacted approach. IIUC Sci-hub has scooped up science docs through a good enough UX that it was able to leverage the goodwill of science folks to upload docs (plus whatever other methods it has used to scoop up docs), and it uses a public blitzkrieg-style distribution mechanism. I.e., I guess if one had a big enough harddrive and a fast enough internet conne…

> What.cd/Redacted approach seems to use Bittorrent ratios to create a private-tracker economy. New users get a few gigs free download on joining. Isn't that "bittorrent ratio" easy to cheat? I remember a good old times where I had to download some popular files just for ratio, then (beginning of 10's everybody starts to cheat and some of the biggest trackers turned to forever free leach.

>Isn't that "bittorrent ratio" easy to cheat?

Yes[0] but you have to be careful else you might get caught

0: https://wiki.installgentoo.com/wiki/Ghostleech

Re: How to become a pirate archivist

#88

Post by orbital-decay »

relaxing wrote: post #75
throwhn0000001 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Redacted's ratio economy is fucked. There's groups of people using high speed seedboxes that grab every new upload to build up ratio in a normal way, if you can call it that. Everyone else is left with scraps, trickling data out to whoever comes later. Or maybe you get lucky and you're the lone seeder, you get a 1:1 copy. You just better hope that was on a 24-Bit FLAC release, given how big they can get. There's many…

What saves the economy is the generous freeleech and gift token events. (Currently one running if you haven’t logged in this week.) It all serves the purpose of getting users to be good citizens participating in the community, and not just snatch and run.

In theory. In practice, most just can't be bothered using private trackers because of this. Hard to get into, hard to keep up - you have to be a dedicated archivist just to use them. Which is the polar opposite of why people have been torrenting in the past - piracy had less friction than using licensed content.

Rutracker works differently, they aren't afraid of snatch-and-run. They managed to build a community out of those dedicated archivists. So the volunteers keep the rare content afloat, and the tracker can also be open and usable by ordinary people as well (which keeps popular content afloat). This approach also has its flaws, of course.

Re: How to become a pirate archivist

#89

Post by 29083011397778 »

eimrine wrote: post #80
jancsika wrote: post #15

I'm curious how Sci-hub's approach compares to the What.cd/Redacted approach. IIUC Sci-hub has scooped up science docs through a good enough UX that it was able to leverage the goodwill of science folks to upload docs (plus whatever other methods it has used to scoop up docs), and it uses a public blitzkrieg-style distribution mechanism. I.e., I guess if one had a big enough harddrive and a fast enough internet conne…

> What.cd/Redacted approach seems to use Bittorrent ratios to create a private-tracker economy. New users get a few gigs free download on joining. Isn't that "bittorrent ratio" easy to cheat? I remember a good old times where I had to download some popular files just for ratio, then (beginning of 10's everybody starts to cheat and some of the biggest trackers turned to forever free leach.

Other users also report their upload and download. Ergo, if you say you uploaded 10gig, it would show up in other users' download. This is tracked and checked, and you'll be kicked if you try to play the system this way.

Re: How to become a pirate archivist

#90

Post by margalabargala »

relaxing wrote: post #75
throwhn0000001 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Redacted's ratio economy is fucked. There's groups of people using high speed seedboxes that grab every new upload to build up ratio in a normal way, if you can call it that. Everyone else is left with scraps, trickling data out to whoever comes later. Or maybe you get lucky and you're the lone seeder, you get a 1:1 copy. You just better hope that was on a 24-Bit FLAC release, given how big they can get. There's many…

What saves the economy is the generous freeleech and gift token events. (Currently one running if you haven’t logged in this week.) It all serves the purpose of getting users to be good citizens participating in the community, and not just snatch and run.

> generous freeleech and gift token events

That's what saved the what.cd economy, which had generous freeleech and gift token events. RED does it differently, and has stingy and ineffective freeleech and gift token events. On wcd, staff picks were freeleech, and that ensured people were able to download and seed, and there was free liquidity.

RED's lack of large freeleech events has meant that most people on the site don't have much buffer, and can't just download what they like. It's functionally a forced recession due to lack of liquidity.

Basically an internet version of this: https://yathartharora.substack.com/p/53-the-babysitting-rece...

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