Recent and related:
Putting Z-Library on IPFS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33675224 - Nov 2022 (129 comments)
Help seed Z-Library on IPFS
131–140 of 151 posts
Re: Help seed Z-Library on IPFS
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I wouldn't buy (and probably wouldn't afford) a 30-day stay at the most luxurious spa in my country, should I insist that they let me enter anyway? That's tangible. You consume space, resources, people time, water, energy, etc. People have to clean after you. For comparison, take the scenario of a 10 year old from a poor family pirating Solidworks, which costs $5000-ish a license. The family doesn't have $5000 in t…
> Kid doesn't pirate Solidworks. Company makes $0, because it's impossible for them to buy it. I have this impression that "poor kid" vs "incredibly expensive software" is used as a strawman here, since we're talking of $30 books that anyone who's not incredibly poor can buy just by saving for a couple of months and anyone who's that poor can probably access using a public library anyway, versus the enormous amount o…
Obviously I'm using an exaggerated and artificial example to illustrate my point. Which is that it doesn't really work like actual theft. First, no cost is imposed on the producer of the software, because somebody torrenting an installer doesn't cost the company any money. And second, there are plenty situations where they never going to make any money no matter what.
Eg, back when I was 12 I did pirate software, and I didn't have the money to buy it if I wanted to. There was just no scenario under which those companies could have gotten paid. The alternative would be I'd just get my hands on something else, or mess around with the stuff I already had.
This even goes for things like $30 books. I grabbed a whole bunch of stuff just to take a look at what's it like. When pirating stuff a kid might grab an university book on biology out of curiosity to see how it compares to their high school lessons, but pretty much nobody actually buys books for reasons like that. The alternative reality is that it either doesn't happen or they check it out at a library instead, and again the publisher doesn't get any money.
Re: Help seed Z-Library on IPFS
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess the elephant in the room is that you're not paying the authors for what they created; in this sense it's like "stealing". Someone spends time and resources making something and you use that something without compensating that someone. I agree it's not exactly like stealing (that's why we invented a different word for it), bt ut's still something that is unfair to the book author(s).
But you can’t really “steal” something digital, when they can be freely multiplied any number of times without degrading. If you go to a supermarket and steal a TV that’s stealing. You taking a picture of it isn’t.
You cannot really "steal" military secrets by photograping them either, but it's still a threat to national safety. You cannot really "steal" trade secrets by photocopying documents, but it's still an incalculable damage to the company you target if you do. You cannot really "steal" someone's privacy, but if you look at their private correspondence or their electoral card you're still infringing on their right.
Does it really matter if you can call an action "stealing" or not? An action could still be damaging even if it's not technically "stealing".
Re: Help seed Z-Library on IPFS
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's worthwhile to be precise when we argue. Saying it's not stealing isn't necessarily saying it's harmless or that it's not illegal. It's just not the same sort of action. Eg, if you steal a book from a shelf, then it's gone. The shop can no longer sell it to anyone else, and needs to obtain a replacement. The customer that really need it may not be able to get it now. But if a 10 year old from a dirt poor…
> I think it's very arguable that there was no scenario in which the authors would have gotten paid Just to be sure: do you think that if people can't afford something that's not physically tangible they should be entitled (or at least permitted) to have it free of charge, because they wouldn't buy it anyway? I wouldn't buy (and probably wouldn't afford) a 30-day stay at the most luxurious spa in my country, should I…
> no cost is imposed on the producer of the software, because somebody torrenting an installer doesn't cost the company any money.
Lost profit is still lost money. If you run a bar and I falsely tell everyone that your beer is poisoned (and everyone believes me) I'm not costing you any money, but you're still bankrupt at the end of the year.
> When pirating stuff a kid might grab an university book on biology out of curiosity to see how it compares to their high school lessons, but pretty much nobody actually buys books for reasons like that.
You sure that's the only plausible case? Here's another scenario: you need a programming book for your career, but you don't like spending $30 for it and you just pirate it. You would probably have bought it if you couldn't pirate it, but obviously pirating it costs less at nearly no risk; why should you spend $30?
I think this scenario is much more plausible than poor 10-year old kids downloading biology books for fun. But even if it wasn't, piracy enables both scenarios without distinction. Even if it was 80-20, that 20% of not-bought books would have ben bought if piracy didn't exist.
> The alternative reality is that it either doesn't happen or they check it out at a library instead, and again the publisher doesn't get any money.
I'm pretty sure public libraries pay for the books they have, directly or indirectly (with taxpayers' money)
Re: Help seed Z-Library on IPFS
#135Be warned that IPFS is not anonymous, and the IP addresses of the nodes serving the content are quite easily obtainable. And since the FBI already got involved and arrested people, this is quite the risky endeavor.
Filecoin might be a good solution for this. Basically pay other people to host it for you
filecoin is built on ipfs.
Re: Help seed Z-Library on IPFS
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Taking all your fiat money technically doesn't "remove" it either, just relocation. Gets even better if we talk about virtual funds.
When all my fiat money is taken, I cannot use it anymore, therefore it's removed. If you make an exact copy of my fiat money, yet I can still use it, nothing is stolen.
> When all my fiat money is taken, I cannot use it anymore, therefore it's removed.
Ok, so if your intellectual property is stolen ... err, sorry, "copied" of course, how do you get monetized for those "copied" copies? By your initial statement it's not removed, now you tell me it is? Weird.
Re: Help seed Z-Library on IPFS
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is an artist's gallery in my town. The artist sells lots of pieces (or tries to; no idea how successful). If I go and look at each piece, really take it in and absorb it fully and internalize it, but buy nothing, have I done the thing that's not exactly like stealing? If I download a PDF and read it and then delete it as soon as I am done, have I done the thing that is not exactly like stealing? If I go to a li…
There is an artist's gallery in your town. The artist charges $10 on entry to see the pieces, that's how he/she makes a living. You enter from a backdoor that someone left open to avoid paying, and you additionally help anyone who wants to enter for free by showing them the backdoor. You know that what you're doing is illegal, but you don't care because the building where the gallery is hosted doesn't have anyone to…
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Re: Help seed Z-Library on IPFS
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
When all my fiat money is taken, I cannot use it anymore, therefore it's removed. If you make an exact copy of my fiat money, yet I can still use it, nothing is stolen.
> When all my fiat money is taken, I cannot use it anymore, therefore it's removed. Ok, so if your intellectual property is stolen ... err, sorry, "copied" of course, how do you get monetized for those "copied" copies? By your initial statement it's not removed, now you tell me it is? Weird.
There's no such thing as "intellectual property". If you don't want other people learning the information your mind has come up with, don't release it into the public where it can be easily shared.
> but I want money! I don't care if everyone else loses their right to sharing information!
Not my problem.
Re: Help seed Z-Library on IPFS
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Piracy is a misnomer used to make people feel like unauthorized copying is "stealing", since "piracy" traditionally refers to people who perform armed robbery on high seas. Copying can be unauthorized, but when you say it as it is, "unauthorized copying" sounds a lot less terrible then "stealing" and "piracy", and is more precise in meaning.
Everyone calls it piracy, including the people who are active in the 'unauthorized copying' community. I'm not sure what's your objective in this discussion.
My objective is to get people to argue precisely why copying is bad.
Calling it "stealing", "piracy" and other ugly words is a strawman argument - we all agree stealing (physical items) and piracy (on high seas) is bad, so that would imply that copying is bad, too, since "copying is stealing and piracy". It's not, and additional arguments are needed.
Re: Help seed Z-Library on IPFS
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn't that saturate Tor? Bittorrent via Tor was always highly discouraged to not overload the network with all the p2p traffic and IPFS is a very similar technique.
> Doesn't that saturate Tor? No, that's a stupid myth that needs to die. The tor network is nowhere near the advertised bandwidth capacity: https://metrics.torproject.org/bandwidth-flags.html
https://support.torproject.org/misc/misc-4/ links to TODO which says "We've been saying for years not to run Bittorrent over Tor, because the Tor network can't handle the load;" and links to a dead page "Why Tor is slow". I googled that and found https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Why_is_Tor_slow#Misuse_of_the_To... and https://tails.boum.org/doc/anonymous_internet/tor/slow/index... which sound like they were both sourced from that defunct page.
So, if you call it a stupid myth, please provide some credible proof. The Tor developers as well as the maintainers of two highly respected tools built upon Tor disagree with you.