The upload buttons of those sites seem to be there mainly to create plausible deniability. If any content creates trouble which cannot be made to easily go away just by taking it down, the site owners can claim they did not upload it themselves and that they don't have any records of who did. Or they could also create fake upload records if they want to stretch things a bit further. In practice, I think it's a very safe bet that 99.999999% of the documents on those sites have been obtained through scraping other sites, and are not user-submitted content.
One of the world’s most visited websites that nobody is aware of (2017)
51–60 of 169 posts
Re: One of the world’s most visited websites that nobody is aware of (2017)
#52Here is the real question everybody should ask themselves: In today’s world, Why do I try to work honestly for a dollar?
For one thing, you might not want to risk being in jail.
Re: One of the world’s most visited websites that nobody is aware of (2017)
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd go with a). Very dumb move.
“Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence” said Napoleon.
Never ascribe to Napoleon etc.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/12/30/not-malice/
TL;DR Seems to have been first attributed to 'Napolean' on Usenet in 1997!
Re: One of the world’s most visited websites that nobody is aware of (2017)
#54The ad revenue estimate could be off by as much as an order of magnitude. This is a non-story. There are millions of spam websites on the internet.
Re: One of the world’s most visited websites that nobody is aware of (2017)
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
If a file is available through non-auth http it’s unclear what the copyright is. I think it depends on the particular item whether copyright was violated. Making a file public without restriction doesn’t mean another can’t make profit (my ISP makes a profit by transmitting the file to me; gmail makes profit when I email the file to me; google makes a profit when they cache the file; archive makes a profit when they a…
> If a file is available through non-auth http it’s unclear what the copyright is. Protocol has nothing to do with copyright. “Non-auth http” doesn't suddenly make copyright murky. > But by releasing a document publicly with unlimited access via URL the author explicitly allows unlimited distribution (and due to the nature of tcp/ip redistribution). There is an implicit license to exactly the redistribution necessary…
There is no implicit licence. This is an oft-circulated but fallacious rationalization made by computer people that is not in line with the law.
The law does not recognize any such thing, and until the turn of the 21st century this was a recognized hole. Technically, the World Wide Web (and indeed other systems from FidoNet to SMTP) was a violation of many countries' copyright laws. Legislators fixed the hole, but not by introducing the idea of implicit licencing.
The EU introduced provisions in 2001, by way of a Directive, that the making of temporary transient copies for the likes of HTTP and other network transmission mechanisms to work was explicitly not copyright violation in the first place. This became Netherlands law in 2004, and U.K. law in 2003. Neither the Directive nor the implementing Acts and Instruments talk about licensing. It is simply not a violation of copyright by definition.
* https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/ALL/?uri=CELEX:32...
* https://www.ivir.nl/publicaties/download/RIDA2005_206.pdf
* http://wetten.overheid.nl/jci1.3:c:BWBR0001886&hoofdstuk=I&p...
* https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2003/2498/regulation/8/m...
Re: One of the world’s most visited websites that nobody is aware of (2017)
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's no telling whether or not that's his real name. Edit: as a commenter below pointed out, just because a person with a name lives at an address, they may not run a website that they're listed as running. After all you probably live at an address, and if I was a fraudster I could list you.
Except that if you read the article the reporters confirmed that a guy by that name lived at that apartment complex by asking the neighbors. There’s no guarantee that the person who registered is actually the person who lives there but someone answers to that name at the address provided apparently.
You can just take address/phone book and point at a random lucky guy and register as him.
Re: One of the world’s most visited websites that nobody is aware of (2017)
#57Wow, the title doesn't do this justice. "Google makes millions from Russian organized crime" might be better.
"Organized" usually implies a, well, organization. This seems like it may be just one guy. I don't see anything about this site that would particularly require an "organization".
Re: One of the world’s most visited websites that nobody is aware of (2017)
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much time did this guy save people by providing the content quickly and easily to users? I say fair game to Vladimir for his innovation.
Did you read the description of the downloading process? If content discovery was the goal he could've just linked to the source
It provided the content using a online PDF viewer it seems, so downloading the actual PDF is not that important
Re: One of the world’s most visited websites that nobody is aware of (2017)
#59Here is the real question everybody should ask themselves: In today’s world, Why do I try to work honestly for a dollar?
For my own sake.
> Of course it is "more useful" to perpetrate than to suffer injustice, but for the sake of the thinking dialogue with myself this utilitarian standpoint has to be given up."
> Natürlich ist es "nützlicher", Unrecht zu tun als Unrecht zu leiden; um des denkenden Dialogs mit mir selbst willen muss gerade dieser Nützlichkeitsstandpunkt aufgegeben werden.
-- Hannah Arendt, "Wahrheit und Politik"
Re: One of the world’s most visited websites that nobody is aware of (2017)
#60The site is nice. I can search "psychology" view 400 pdfs. Click on one, view the pdf at the top of the browser and with the transcription below. All text of the transcription is google translated when using chrome. It makes me think about how it must be when obtaining financial freedom and just dumping money on viewing whatever you want to read. Except I haven't found a good translator for pdfs, so this transcription is nice on the site. Also most if not all of the Pdfs are not complete and makes me think this site is beneficial to the source publishers.