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Twenty-five years ago it was cryptography, today it's model weights

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Re: Twenty-five years ago it was cryptography, today it's model weights

#51

Post by Aurornis »

bitwize wrote: post #43
matheusmoreira wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Piracy is a service problem. Copyright monopolists always defeat themselves with their obnoxious greed. Things were easy enough when Netflix had a complete catalog, now every studio wants to roll their own shitty streaming services in order to cut Netflix out. Result is a fragmented mess where you want to watch a great film but you have no idea where the hell it even is, and even if you find it you discover it doesn'…

Apple TV has a search function that allows you to find a film or series irrespectice of whatever service it's on, and launch the appropriate app to play it.

Some times I read these mental gymnastics comments about piracy being easier and wonder if these people have actually tried to learn how to use something like an Apple TV.

I think the services part they really dislike is just the part where your credit card gets charged when you click the buy or rent button. Doing all of the piracy stuff with VPNs and navigating torrent sites and getting a setup where you can play files on your TV is an order of magnitude more work.

Re: Twenty-five years ago it was cryptography, today it's model weights

#52

Post by perpetuallunch »

zarzavat wrote: post #48
perpetuallunch wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheaper & easier - not by much. Australia blocks all the good torrent sites, so now I need a VPN, a reputable one. Also need terabytes of network connected storage, and usually I need more and more of it over time. Better and more networking equipment to buy and maintain. Media management and streaming software that works locally and remotely, to (maybe buy) and maintain. Or I can usage discount offers for the variou…

This is true for music because the labels decided that they would upload their catalogs to every streaming service. It's not true for movies, because the movie industry decided to sign exclusivity deals or make movies only available on their own platforms. Thus piracy is still the only reliable way to watch movies: you might get access to some subset of movies depending on which streaming service you subscribe to, bu…

How does that negate needing a VPN, storage, networking, media management, remote access, malware?

I’ve never met even a data hoarder who has “all of them”, and I tend to watch them one at a time anyways, so I’d argue “not all of them” isn’t really a problem anyone has.

Having said that, I do tend to pirate a relatively small collection of movies and series, just the ones I could watch over and over and never get tired off.

Re: Twenty-five years ago it was cryptography, today it's model weights

#53

Post by perpetuallunch »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #47
perpetuallunch wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheaper & easier - not by much. Australia blocks all the good torrent sites, so now I need a VPN, a reputable one. Also need terabytes of network connected storage, and usually I need more and more of it over time. Better and more networking equipment to buy and maintain. Media management and streaming software that works locally and remotely, to (maybe buy) and maintain. Or I can usage discount offers for the variou…

It's only a DNS block fwiw. If you set your DNS to 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8 everything works fine.

I recently realised even the build in iOS Private Relay gets around the Australian Government site blocks.

Re: Twenty-five years ago it was cryptography, today it's model weights

#54

Post by bladeacidic »

Aurornis wrote: post #50
matheusmoreira wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Piracy is a service problem. Copyright monopolists always defeat themselves with their obnoxious greed. Things were easy enough when Netflix had a complete catalog, now every studio wants to roll their own shitty streaming services in order to cut Netflix out. Result is a fragmented mess where you want to watch a great film but you have no idea where the hell it even is, and even if you find it you discover it doesn'…

> Piracy is a service problem > Meanwhile the pirates offer Blu-Ray remuxes with commentary tracks, subtitles for every language, DRM free files that just work on your video player of choice. I think the only people who believe that pirating is easier than using the streaming services are people who spend so much time with computers that they round the mental overhead of navigating torrent websites, finding the corre…

There's apps for that these days. Not going to names them, but if you're still downloading a torrent file on a computer, you're behind the times. It's as easy as Netflix on an Android TV with a remote these days.

Re: Twenty-five years ago it was cryptography, today it's model weights

#55

Post by stale2002 »

inigyou wrote: post #20
theturtletalks wrote: post #9

We need a cypherpunks movement for open weight models

cypherpunks of today would probably be focused on bringing big tech down a notch, rather than spreading more LLMs

No, being a cyberpunk is not about having some authoritarian control that prevents other people from using technology.

Instead it is about empowering the masses. It's about being a rag tag hacker fighting to do stuff that other people want to stop you from doing.

Re: Twenty-five years ago it was cryptography, today it's model weights

#56

Post by stale2002 »

class3shock wrote: post #49

The framing of this entire issue is just wrong. "Today the reflex is back." To do what? Ban export of AI? Are you sure? Because it seems, so far, there has been some personal motivated government restrictions due to people not bending the knee and industry moves and clamoring about dangers to generate hype. "The fears have changed." Yeah, people are fearful that the entirety of the internet has been hoovered up and p…

> people are fearful that the entirety of the internet has been hoovered up

Information wants to be free. If you don't like the idea of information, ideas, ect being shared freely for anyone to use just say that. But you aren't on the side of open source.

> that maybe such a consequential tech doesn't belong in the hands of a few tech bros whose only qualification for owning it is being rich.

The solution to that is open weights, and for the technology to be in the hands of more people not less.

This point agrees with the central point that spreading out this tech as much as possible, with open weights, is the good thing here.

> A giant concentration of power

Concentration of power would be preventing open weights not supporting it.

Like WTF do you mean. Open source would be allowing anyone to use the tech easily. Obviously open source would want LLM weights to be public and easily sharable

Re: Twenty-five years ago it was cryptography, today it's model weights

#57

Post by sureMan6 »

perpetuallunch wrote: post #52
zarzavat wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true for music because the labels decided that they would upload their catalogs to every streaming service. It's not true for movies, because the movie industry decided to sign exclusivity deals or make movies only available on their own platforms. Thus piracy is still the only reliable way to watch movies: you might get access to some subset of movies depending on which streaming service you subscribe to, bu…

How does that negate needing a VPN, storage, networking, media management, remote access, malware? I’ve never met even a data hoarder who has “all of them”, and I tend to watch them one at a time anyways, so I’d argue “ not all of them ” isn’t really a problem anyone has. Having said that, I do tend to pirate a relatively small collection of movies and series, just the ones I could watch over and over and never get t…

You can access streaming (not torrenting) sites without a VPN and just watch whatever movies you want and there's no hastle or malware? If you like something particularly you can download it and then storage becomes a factor, and if all streaming sites are blocked a VPN subscription (reputable just mulvad) costs less than any streaming service and gives you access to every single movie and show, impossible to debate that it's not more convenient

Re: Twenty-five years ago it was cryptography, today it's model weights

#58

Post by PunchyHamster »

aftbit wrote: post #11

The same argument applies to DRM and piracy. DRM only disadvantages people who want to consume content legally. Only one person has to bypass it (be it through cryptographic or software failings or the good old fashioned analog hole ala telesync) then upload the resulting unencumbered media file to a piracy site. As a result, it's not just cheaper, but also easier and more reliable to steal media than it is to buy it…

> What would happen if media were offered without DRM? Everything would be on a piracy site? It already is.

But the media ARE offered without DRM. At least many video games, the big ones too. And somehow they sell just fine

Re: Twenty-five years ago it was cryptography, today it's model weights

#59

Post by perpetuallunch »

Aurornis wrote: post #50
matheusmoreira wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Piracy is a service problem. Copyright monopolists always defeat themselves with their obnoxious greed. Things were easy enough when Netflix had a complete catalog, now every studio wants to roll their own shitty streaming services in order to cut Netflix out. Result is a fragmented mess where you want to watch a great film but you have no idea where the hell it even is, and even if you find it you discover it doesn'…

> Piracy is a service problem > Meanwhile the pirates offer Blu-Ray remuxes with commentary tracks, subtitles for every language, DRM free files that just work on your video player of choice. I think the only people who believe that pirating is easier than using the streaming services are people who spend so much time with computers that they round the mental overhead of navigating torrent websites, finding the corre…

Yep, same. I still pirate media from time to time, but it’s become increasingly infrequent that each time I think to do it I end up putting it off for months because I’d rather gargle broken glass, or watch politicians give state their opinion on topic or another, than go through all the rigmarole of pirating media.

Watching something on a streaming service, or using Apple / Google to “rent” it for a few days is like, what, three clicks away.

Rather than my media server updated over night and won’t boot, I’ve got it booting to a terminal session but the database is corrupted, fuck it I’ll just buy $2000 worth of new hard drives and then re down everything in Ultra 16k 96 bit colour with 4000 gigabit Dolby 400 channel surround-surround and upgraded to all gold plated fibre cabling and have this fixed in no time. Or my torrent site account got hacked or blocked, or the site changed URL again, or they updated their database and “hope to be back up soon”, or a Three Letter Agency seized the their hardware because they were also a involved in human trafficking of blood diamond child sex slaves, again.

It’s all too hard. I’d rather just listen to the footy on AM radio, or maybe read a book. Or occasionally complain about there being too many, or not enough, clouds / rain / sun / wind.

Re: Twenty-five years ago it was cryptography, today it's model weights

#60

Post by VeninVidiaVicii »

aftbit wrote: post #11

The same argument applies to DRM and piracy. DRM only disadvantages people who want to consume content legally. Only one person has to bypass it (be it through cryptographic or software failings or the good old fashioned analog hole ala telesync) then upload the resulting unencumbered media file to a piracy site. As a result, it's not just cheaper, but also easier and more reliable to steal media than it is to buy it…

You wouldn’t steal a Claude!
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