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US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

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201–210 of 228 posts

Re: US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as we're busy chatting about pet languages, comparing work/life balances, and generally masturbating about startup culture, we (as a collective) aren't going to do a damned thing. It's time to acknowledge that this behavior of our governments is beginning to violate a reasonable social contract, and if not that, certainly at least realize that our livelihoods are coming under attack. It may well be time to st…

You're very right but I believe there's an even deeper problem here. There will always be people trying to manipulate the system to serve their needs but I think we can start winning some of these cases by educating the public. A lot of the people deciding on these issues have no clue how the things they're ruling on works. This judge most likely doesn't know that he just opened the floodgates for abuse. This judge w…

I had a professor last year who used our school's homepage's Yahoo search bar to search for Google, then searched Google for Youtube. And he has two doctorate degrees.

Re: US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

#202

Look. I know it's HN and we're all very serious business here. And I'm not trying to be age-ist – my condemnation is strictly confined to mental state. But what. the fuck . do we do with these dinosaurs who know nothing of technology policy but have decided to go and make it anyway ? What do we do? The strategy of waiting for them to retire or whatever doesn't seem to be paying off.

We need to invent the following things so we can be forever truly free: 1) A secure, peer to peer DNS system with no registrars and a dynamic, heterarchical network of trust. 2) An encrypted version of TCP that we can drop in without anyone noticing. 3) A way of distributing keys for our encrypted transport layer without certificate authorities and again with a dynamic, heterarchical network of trust. 4) A secure, pe…

If it were more usable, I'd point towards Freenet. They've been at building a system like this since 2000 -- it's just a shame it runs so slowly.

Re: US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

#203

Look. I know it's HN and we're all very serious business here. And I'm not trying to be age-ist – my condemnation is strictly confined to mental state. But what. the fuck . do we do with these dinosaurs who know nothing of technology policy but have decided to go and make it anyway ? What do we do? The strategy of waiting for them to retire or whatever doesn't seem to be paying off.

As somebody who works as an expert (I hate that word by the way, so I apologize) in the legal field, I can say this sentiment is pretty accurate. People think the that evil cabal of lawyers et al conspire against the little man to crush, oppress, and otherwise harm them through litigious means.

This is not the case per se.

There are lawyers filled with the utmost dickery, but that is not all of them. The fact of the matter is aformentioned dickerous individuals can take advantage of a system largely ill equipped to handle technology cases. Whether it be a jury that barely knows the difference between a hard drive to a floppy drive or a doddering, self-indulgent, and masturbatory judge--it's over their heads.

I do my "due diligence" to not contort facts and try to explain things as best as I can. But, despite my best efforts I always know that there will be some basic technical misunderstandings in the judges' opinion/ruling.

People keep trying to shoe-horn computer concepts into ancient, arcane notions they have about law and life in general. When nobody in the court room except the experts know what is going on technically--and admittedly are influenced by those that hire them (despite professional conduct), this essentially means whoever has the best narrative wins. Though, that fact might not be exclusive to computer-based cases.

People expect magic. Either you're talking them down about how these artifacts of X could mean Y but just because Z file i sin /home/bob doesn't necessarily mean it was Bob sitting at the terminal. Or, you get the other extreme, where you're defending yourself from an ignorant, nearly exceptional cavalcade of "How you can really know for sure?" type questions. And, of course, any expert if hired to do so can easily be that dick-for-hire.

I've had cases where I suspected the judge prolonged the costly trial simply to indulgent their whimsy. Oh, how fancy! You can pull up their deleted files and internet records? ENTERTAIN ME MORE!

Re: US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't suggest that we need a social network, but your first suggestion isn't too far from the truth. The exact thing needed is very boring, very low-level, and very unsexy, and I believe can be summarized thusly: We need a method for locating hosts on a network graph which does not have a central point of failure and which cannot be easily disabled. We then need a method for authentically routing messages back a…

Why wouldn't government simply ban the whole thing? Consider ham radio: my dad used to be really into it, and it doesn't cost much to get into it. But the government can scare away a lot of people from it, simply with the distant threat of some kind of punishment. So most people do it the legal way, at which point it becomes a big hassle - tests and certificates. And as soon as tests and certificates are needed, most…

>Why wouldn't government simply ban the whole thing?

If they ban it but it lets people do something they want to do and can't otherwise as conveniently then they will ignore the ban.

>but most people won't go near it if it is illegal.

Really? I think the media industry would beg to differ. Normal, everyday people have stolen more songs than they have time left in their lives to listen to.

You're taking an obscure example that many people don't even know about, much less want to do and using that to say people won't touch it if it's illegal while missing media piracy; something most people do want and most have had no issue just taking it, laws or no laws.

Re: US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

#205
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The larger you are, the harder it gets to disobey their rulings. Google can fight if the ruling is illegal or obviously unfair, but they can't hide and pretend it's not with them after being mentioned.

> The larger you are, the harder it gets to disobey their rulings. Imagine Google replacing google.com with a clear statement denouncing a particular government action and naming names? Imagine Google de-indexing the government instead? They have so many more options available quite simply because they have such massive exposure.

Imagine the U.S. government taking google.com from the DNS list and making it a felony to link to not only the domain but the IP addresses that belong to Google as well.

Re: US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

#206

Look. I know it's HN and we're all very serious business here. And I'm not trying to be age-ist – my condemnation is strictly confined to mental state. But what. the fuck . do we do with these dinosaurs who know nothing of technology policy but have decided to go and make it anyway ? What do we do? The strategy of waiting for them to retire or whatever doesn't seem to be paying off.

We need to invent the following things so we can be forever truly free: 1) A secure, peer to peer DNS system with no registrars and a dynamic, heterarchical network of trust. 2) An encrypted version of TCP that we can drop in without anyone noticing. 3) A way of distributing keys for our encrypted transport layer without certificate authorities and again with a dynamic, heterarchical network of trust. 4) A secure, pe…

Sounds like a great project for Mozilla to jump on. I'm slightly surprised they don't appear to have worked on this problem before. Or have they?

Re: US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

#207

Look. I know it's HN and we're all very serious business here. And I'm not trying to be age-ist – my condemnation is strictly confined to mental state. But what. the fuck . do we do with these dinosaurs who know nothing of technology policy but have decided to go and make it anyway ? What do we do? The strategy of waiting for them to retire or whatever doesn't seem to be paying off.

What we need is competition. There needs to be a viable alternative to the US government. Small policy changes or people changes or party changes will not be sufficient. Big changes will not happen without outside competition. Someday, some country is going to recognize that supporting free culture can be a huge competitive advantage. I would like to live in that country. I'd take a pay cut to move there. I think man…

There needs to be a viable alternative to the US government

You mean other countries? Yes there is a world outside the USA.

I'm not certain where to start

Move to a country which you like?

Re: US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

#208

Look. I know it's HN and we're all very serious business here. And I'm not trying to be age-ist – my condemnation is strictly confined to mental state. But what. the fuck . do we do with these dinosaurs who know nothing of technology policy but have decided to go and make it anyway ? What do we do? The strategy of waiting for them to retire or whatever doesn't seem to be paying off.

We make clear and take advantage of their position that there is no "right to access" nor "property" as traditionally defined, on the net. We do this by "disconnecting" them. No technical support. Their ISP's free to discontinue service to / their business relationship with them.

Cut them off.

Practically, this probably won't happen -- and there would always be sell-outs raising the question of additional actions/escalation against them. But, fundamentally, this is how I see it. Their own arguments admit our ability to exclude them. And we should -- "route around the damage", and all that.

Mind you, in the above, I'm not advocating anything patently illegal. I'm not talking about "hacking (cracking)" their systems, nor DoS-ing them, etc. Just, don't do business with them, and don't support them. Shun them.

Re: US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

#210
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And where are you getting this 1% number from? Why are you assuming a 99% false positive rate? It's not hard to identify bogus retailers in this case because luxury brands usually have direct contractual relations with retail partners rather than selling though wholesale channels. So if you see cheap stuff.com selling 'Chanel' merchandise and they're not on the list of authorized distributors, then by definition they…

> And where are you getting this 1% number from? I would assume it's from this part of the article: "How were the sites investigated? For the most recent batch of names, Chanel hired a Nevada investigator to order from three of the 228 sites in question. When the orders arrived, they were reviewed by a Chanel official and declared counterfeit." It was closer to 1.3% if that makes you feel any better.

That doesn't speak to the point I made about distributor relationships. There's a reasonable presumption here that anyone selling such merchandise actually offering counterfeit goods because Chanel does not sell into the wholesale market.
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