151–160 of 289 posts
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how they were able to recover from that is beyond me.
They didn't. I haven't bought a Metallica album since the black album. That was a decade earlier, because everything since sucked, but as I got older I thought about maybe expanding my tastes. I avoided Metallica specifically for their disrespect of their fans.
The world has become so strange. In my pirate youth, I would have never imagined the big companies to argue in courts like this, basically pro piracy. And the activists are now against it, because the big guys are doing it.
> And the activists are now against it, because the big guys are doing it. Different activists are different. "Information wants to be free" activists are against different things from "artists trying to make an honest living" activists. And different big guys are different. A big guy AI company wants different things from a big guy book publisher.
...uhhh, I mean, maybe my perspective is skewed because I largely run in bluegrass/deadhead circles, but the venn diagram of these two seems to be nearly a circle.
Some of us are old enough to remember when the RIAA sued children for downloading Metallica albums on filesharing networks. They sued for $100,000 per song, an absurd amount when you consider that even stealing a physical album would amount only to around $1 per song. What was bizarre was that courts took the figure seriously, even if they typically settled cases for around $3,000, still around 30x actual damages. Th…
Remember that Metallica band members played an active driving role in those lawsuits against their own underage fans. It wasn't just the RIAA / record company organizations behaving cruelly, it was Metallica themselves. Fuck Metallica.
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It's not like there has been some change in principle and some sort of knife to sharpen. "2005 personal pirate" was about making art accessible. "2025 corpo pirate" is about killing art.
LLMs make pirated art more accessible, and 2005 pirates allegedly harmed artists by decreasing their sales. The significant change is that 2025 corpo pirates are big corporations, and 2005 personal pirates are individuals. And I think the larger issue is that the big corpo pirates get away with what 2025 personal pirates wouldn’t. Anyways, my opinion is that we should get rid of IP, but only with a replacement that e…
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People could always simply argue in court that their torrenting was free use. If you're just some nobody representing yourself instead of an expensive lawyer acting on behalf of a large company, maybe the judge will even try to be extra nice when he explains why the argument doesn't hold water.
It has been often said that a man who represents himself in court has a fool for a client.
[0] I don't like to say "represent yourself." I once angered a judge by pointing out that you can't "represent yourself, you are yourself."
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People could always simply argue in court that their torrenting was free use. If you're just some nobody representing yourself instead of an expensive lawyer acting on behalf of a large company, maybe the judge will even try to be extra nice when he explains why the argument doesn't hold water.
Sadly, in many courts, when it comes to the corporate and the government, the judges rule on the axiom, "Show me your lawyer first, and I will rule, rather than show me the law, and I will rule" .
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Why are all forums inundated with this ridiculous nonsense? They are "MAGA"? How so? Are people who follow MAGA typically anti-piracy or something? Bizarre.
It [calling anything you don't like "maga"] is political in-group signalling of a tribal ideology that also serves the dual purpose of destroying the meaning of language. Categorically inappropriate for HN - flag it and move on.
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If you try to download any significant file with zero-upload, you will run out of peers that will share with you much earlier than you will download the file. It's not practical. Most people that speak of leeching or not seeding really are talking about not seeding at all after they've completed. In fact, most clients will let you set upload speeds to a trickle but not zero (zero means unlimited in most clients). Fro…
It’s true that most clients do not support a zero upload configuration, but it’s not inherent to the protocol, and modified clients exist. I’m not aware of any clients that will refuse to share data with clients that are configured to not upload. I don’t even see how they could determine that, especially in situations where there are no other peers to upload to, and given that stats are entirely self-reported and cli…
You will probably get the data eventually, and it really depends on the composition and configuration of the swarm, but generally, you do need to upload if you want to ensure the fastest and most reliable download.
> Anyone who uses BitTorrent to transfer files automatically uploads content to other people, as it is inherent to the protocol. In other words, the uploading wasn’t a choice, it was simply how the technology works. What an argument to make in court. It can be proved false in minutes by the plaintiffs.
Some of us are old enough to remember when the RIAA sued children for downloading Metallica albums on filesharing networks. They sued for $100,000 per song, an absurd amount when you consider that even stealing a physical album would amount only to around $1 per song. What was bizarre was that courts took the figure seriously, even if they typically settled cases for around $3,000, still around 30x actual damages. Th…
Stupid kids