[HN Gopher] GitHub has received a DMCA from MPA about torrent tr...
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GitHub has received a DMCA from MPA about torrent tracker nyaa.si
Author : livueta
Score : 502 points
Date : 2021-01-19 18:05 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| dmaz wrote:
| Reading the complaint, it's clear their focus is not on generic
| tracker source code but on copyrighted file metadata being
| preloaded into the tracker source code:
|
| > The identified files and code are preconfigured to find and
| provide infringing copies of our Members' film and tv content to
| Nyaa.si users in violation of copyright law.
| gnomewascool wrote:
| I've looked at all the "infringing" files that they link to,
| from a bundled zip download from the web archive, and I don't
| see anything that's "preconfigured to find and provide
| infringing copies of our Members' film and tv content".
|
| The most iffy is the list of categories in
| utils/api_uploader_v2.py but there's no category that doesn't
| contain works out of copyright or under a license permitting
| redistribution, and even if that were not the case, that would
| still not be tantamount to being "preconfigured to find"
| anything in particular.
|
| There's also the URL of the pirate site, but google also
| provides it, as do some comments here...
| f311a wrote:
| Yes, people should really read the DMCA before jumping into
| conclusions. I see a lot of false assumptions in the comments.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| In the defense of the falsely-assuming people the actual
| legally actionable bits are all the way at the end of the
| complaint, and the first few paragraphs _sound_ like the MPA
| is alleging that merely publishing the source code of a
| BitTorrent tracker is itself infringement.
|
| I swear, it's almost as if the people who work for these
| publisher trade groups are trying to pull aggro and _look_
| crazy.
| sodality2 wrote:
| To be fair, reading
|
| > The identified files and code are preconfigured to find and
| provide infringing copies of our Members' film and tv content
| to Nyaa.si users in violation of copyright law.
|
| could easily be interpreted as "oh MPA took it down because
| sharing files = bad", not necessarily "their code is very
| specificlaly designed to analyze and collect pirated media".
| The companies behind this are very loose with their wording
| so it looks terrible.
| Hamuko wrote:
| > _Specifically, at the URL, the Repository hosts and offers for
| download the Project, which, when downloaded, provides the
| downloader everything necessary to launch and host a "clone"
| infringing website identical to Nyaa.si (and, thus, engage in
| massive infringement of copyrighted motion pictures and
| television shows)._
|
| I'd like for Motion Picture Association to publish a step-by-step
| guide on how I can engage in massive infringement of copyrighted
| motion pictures and television shows using this piece of
| software.
|
| Because I imagine at some point in the guide they'd tell me to
| generate torrent files of copyrighted files I have and upload
| them to the site, which is really outside of this project.
|
| Or is Nginx also infringing because when downloaded, it allows me
| to start engaging in massive infringement of copyrighted motion
| pictures and television shows by enabling directory indexing and
| uploading MP4s?
| phkahler wrote:
| I was thinking the same until this part:
|
| >> The identified files and code are preconfigured to find and
| provide infringing copies of our Members' film and tv content
| to Nyaa.si users in violation of copyright law.
|
| It's one thing to host software that can be used for this. It's
| another to host software specifically configured for it. Still
| might be legal. I wanted to see what the linked configuration
| files actually contain, but they've been taken down.
|
| It still smacks of going after the tools rather than the
| infringers.
| contravariant wrote:
| This is only true if you consider information that can be
| used to pirate works as "infringing material" that falls
| under the DMCA (in particular its safe harbour provision).
|
| Which would effectively give _any_ copyright holder carte
| blanche to censor _any_ information that _can_ be used to
| infringe their copyright.
| colonwqbang wrote:
| But isn't that exactly what's happening here?
| Hamuko wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20201105144800/https://codeload..
| ..
|
| Have at 'em. .docker/es_sync_config.json
| .docker/nyaa-config-partial.py config.example.py
| migrations/versions/2bceb2cb4d7c_add_comment_count_to_torrent
| .py nyaa/api_handler.py nyaa/static/search-
| sukebei.xml nyaa/templates/home.html
| nyaa/torrents.py utils/api_info.py
| utils/api_uploader_v2.py
| femto113 wrote:
| The smoking gun is right there in config.example.py:
| TRACKER_API_AUTH = 'topsecret' TRACKER_API_URL =
| 'http://127.0.0.1:6881/api'
| gnomewascool wrote:
| How is that a smoking gun?
|
| It connects with a tracker, which might be used to help
| distribute copyrighted works illegally, but also any
| other types of files.
|
| It's possible I'm not getting your sarcasm.
| blitblitblit wrote:
| It's a sarcastic joke, nothing there but a place holder
| for your own API key and you would have to set it up.
| There's no place like 127.0.0.1. :D
| [deleted]
| swirepe wrote:
| A smoking gun is just circumstantial evidence.
|
| The real damning thing in that repository are the few
| lines that play Toy Story 2 if you run them.
| contravariant wrote:
| Okay this is just getting weird. One of those is just a
| database update that counts how many comments a torrent
| has. Another is just some database credentials (probably
| not the ones you want to use in production, unless you
| don't mind people knowing your passwords). The HTML
| template for the home page is also in there for some
| reason. And then to finish things off they added the
| OpenSearch definition which I think you can use to add
| Nyaa/Sukebei as a search engine to your browser.
|
| Really the most suspicious ones are the python scripts in
| utils, which connect to the api on https://nyaa.si by
| default. Although those also only seem to allow you to
| upload torrents (not an infrinfing activity) and download
| the info of a single entry on nyaa (possibly infringing?).
|
| Also they curiously left out sync_es.py, not that that one
| does anything too interesting (it synchronizes a
| elasticsearch database with a MySql database) but it is the
| script that actually uses those configuration files they
| picked out.
| chme wrote:
| Well copyright is, when it comes down to it, not very logical.
|
| In the digital world every picture, video, audio or other
| copyrighted material is represented as a number, which can
| pretty much be any number, if the encoding can be freely
| chosen.
|
| Transferring and storing those numbers (looking at you p) could
| be a copyright violation or not, pretty much just depending on
| the intent.
|
| Because proving intent is very difficult, the rules seem to
| have changed here a bit, so now the defendant would have to
| prove that they didn't intent to do so... Which might be even
| more difficult, but who with money and influence cares about
| that.
| xtracto wrote:
| Exactly... that was demonstrated with DeCSS and AACS a long
| time ago, with shirts printed with colors "encoding" the
| magic number and whatnot.
|
| I would love for someone to actually code this in the
| "rockstar" language. With sufficient "base" conversions, you
| could make any program be represented by the constitution.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| You're right. But unless you have $100m for legal fees, being
| right is irrelevant.
| ihuman wrote:
| > Because I imagine at some point in the guide they'd tell me
| to generate torrent files of copyrighted files I have and
| upload them to the site, which is really outside of this
| project.
|
| One of the files they link to is a utility for uploading
| torrent files (/utils/api_uploader_v2.py). As far as I can
| tell, it doesn't generate the torrent files, just uploads them.
| flyingfences wrote:
| Torrent files in general, yes. Torrent files are not, by
| default, any sort of legal infringement.
| ihuman wrote:
| I agree. I was pointing that file out because it supports
| what you were saying.
| [deleted]
| akerro wrote:
| > I have and upload them to the site, which is really outside
| of this project.
|
| >Or is Nginx also infringing because when downloaded
|
| No, you have to use Google Chrome for this.
| whateveracct wrote:
| > by enabling directory indexing and uploading MP4s?
|
| this shows how the MPAA is a short hop away from saying
| possessing a DRM-free mp4 is tantamount to intent to infringe
| on copyright
| BlueGh0st wrote:
| The idea of constructive possession of copyright infringing
| material is a little hilarious and sad.
| Aerroon wrote:
| Copyright advocates in the past have successfully argued that
| empty CDs are tantamount to copyright infringement. Some
| countries (Spain) have even had (still does?) a tax on HDDs
| and SSDs.
|
| You pay extra when purchasing a harddrive, because it's
| possible to put pirated works on it.
|
| We've already made that hop.
| Shared404 wrote:
| > You pay extra when purchasing a harddrive, because it's
| possible to put pirated works on it.
|
| Well, if we've already payed for it...
|
| Jokes aside, every time I start feeling vaguely guilty
| about pirating something (which I only do from large corps,
| not indies) something like this pops up.
| zadokshi wrote:
| Does admitting such things demonstrate a lack of wisdom?
| Does copyright infringement monitoring extend to comments
| on public forums?
| Shared404 wrote:
| Maybe I'm only kidding. Who knows?
|
| But yes, and probably.
| kaszanka wrote:
| It's not as if it will actually have any consequences.
| chovybizzass wrote:
| Is anyone surprised Microsoft censoring free code now?
| unnouinceput wrote:
| GitHub is Microsoft, right? Well, let them fight I say. Microsoft
| can simply say "no" automatically to all this bullshit (well, a
| generic lawyer "no" response) that will automatically get sent
| back. Good luck for one automation crap to fight with another
| automation crap - or like someone else said in this thread, this
| is Garbage In Garbage Out.
| PointyFluff wrote:
| THE DMCA needs to be killed. Viciously.
| jhare wrote:
| Github bowing to these requests is really disappointing. Makes me
| sad.
| meibo wrote:
| U.S. organizations need to follow U.S. law.
|
| Github has shown that they're trying to fight these things,
| with yt-dl reinstatement and a recent donation to the EFF.
|
| https://github.blog/2020-11-16-standing-up-for-developers-yo...
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| After reviewing the claim, the law lets them choose whether
| they want to take it down in exchange for immunity.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It would be great if the code for GitHub was on GitHub so that
| people could host their own.
|
| How far are we removed from: "please remove this book on C++, as
| individuals may learn how to pirate music from Britney Spears
| using the knowledge herein"
| Confiks wrote:
| Note that there are various older forks [1] [2] available that
| allow to verify that the project isn't in fact "preconfigured to
| find and provide infringing copies of our Members' film and tv
| content". The most 'incriminating' file is "api_uploader_v2.py",
| which lists categories such as "6_2 - Software - Games". Which is
| not infringing at all.
|
| While unrealistic, it's technically possible that some of the
| files have changed (significantly) since June 12 2019, the last
| commit of [1]. However, it's very unlikely that the database
| migration file, 2bceb2cb4d7c_add_comment_count_to_torrent.py,
| would have been changed.
|
| [1] https://github.com/marwanpro/nyaa
|
| [2] https://github.com/crf444/nyaa
| niea_11 wrote:
| You can still download the zip file of the repository through
| archive.org.
|
| And there is no direct link (took a quick look) to copyrighted
| content in the source code. If they shutdown the main site,
| without a data backup, the code is useless. Users will have to
| re-upload and re-seed the torrents they have.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Tangentially, I'm interested in the concept of the torrent
| data moving into something somewhat indestructible by also
| highly available, such as the bitcoin blockchain. Your
| torrent site then "mounts" the blockchain, scanning the chain
| for the torrent data (magnet URIs) necessary to bootstrap a
| corpus.
| niea_11 wrote:
| I think what you're suggesting is already possible (in a
| different way) not by using the blockhain, but by crawling
| bittorrent's DHT.
|
| Either of the solutions, will let seeders and leechers
| communicate in a decentralized way, but if there is no one
| with the original files, it won't work.
|
| So, in this case, nyaa facilitates the seeder/leecher
| communication, but if the main site is shutdown and users
| who have the files are not willing to seed the torrents
| again then the source code is useless.
|
| Crawling bittorrent's DHT is mentioned in this paper [1]:
|
| _This paper presents two kinds of attacks based on crawl-
| ing the DHTs used for distributed BitTorrent tracking.
| First, we show how pirates can use crawling to rebuild
| BitTorrent search engines just a few hours after they are
| shut down (crawling for fun). Second, we show how content
| owners can use related techniques to monitor pi-rates'
| behavior in preparation for legal attacks and negate any
| perceived anonymity of the decentralized BitTorrent
| architecture (crawling for profit)_
|
| [1]: https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/woot10/tech/full_p
| apers/...
| xirbeosbwo1234 wrote:
| As an avid hater of Bitcoin and lover of copyright
| infringement, I am all for that! It would be great if we
| could get the MPA and RIAA to kill Bitcoin for us. People
| would still gamble away their life's savings on other
| scams, like Amway, slot machines, or Tesla stock, but at
| least they wouldn't waste gigawatts of electrical power
| doing it.
| Fabricio20 wrote:
| What you are describing is sorta already a thing, take a
| look at sia[0], which is a coin? used to purchase long-term
| data storage. You can't really scan the chain as far as I
| understand it but why not host the entire index on sia as
| well?
|
| [0]: https://sia.tech
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I would store the data on the bitcoin chain because there
| is an enormous amount of value (hundreds of billions of
| dollars) that hinges on the continued existence of that
| chain.
| avipars wrote:
| now that microsoft owns them, will their polices stay the same?
| [deleted]
| Shared404 wrote:
| Well, now I know about Nyaa.si.
|
| Thanks, MPA!
| [deleted]
| akerro wrote:
| transmission and qbittorrent next?
| tristanc wrote:
| This is not a torrent client. They're referring to a torrent
| tracker. Trackers generally serve to help peers find each
| other.
| Hamuko wrote:
| > _Indeed, copyright infringement is so prevalent within the
| Project that infringement plainly is its predominant use and
| purpose._
|
| Directly from the claim. If they can ban a torrent index (I
| don't know if there's actual tracker code in the project) for
| it being predominantly used for piracy, why not a torrent
| client?
| akerro wrote:
| They took down youtube-dl first, then torrent tracker, so
| torrent clients, browsers and ffmpeg are next.
| notatoad wrote:
| a tracker isn't any more infringing than a client is though.
| rapfaria wrote:
| No, probably gazelle
| einpoklum wrote:
| ... and the repository is down:
|
| https://github.com/nyaadevs/nyaa/
|
| just in case anyone was imagining Microsoft would somehow fight
| for software freedom.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| Can someone knowledgeable explain to me how a tracker source code
| violates DMCA?
|
| What's next, hard disk manufacturers? Internet providers?
| jitendrac wrote:
| Torrent trackers are responsible to introduce Peers to each
| other who are downloading/uploading the same files[torrent].
| Its basically the backbone of torrent.
|
| say for example, you have a torrent file or a magnet link. And
| you start downloading the file using client application, it
| will go to known trackers and ask them the address of peers who
| are uploading the file based on unique hash of it. Torrent
| breaks files in the chunks with size of few MB referred as
| pieces, Tracker will get the current status of downloaded and
| remaining chunks from you and give you the list of peers with
| same file available, at same time it will register your address
| for the other new peers to connect. now connecting peers have
| knowledge of one anther's address they will share pieces to
| others and download remaining from other peers to complete the
| download.
|
| so, basically peer is backbone of system, its a tool which can
| have multiple use legal or not, one cannot simply call its
| source code violating the IPs, that's just an absurd argument.
| Hamuko wrote:
| > _by virtue of the operation and further development of the
| Bittorrent website Nyaa.si's "nyaa" repository (the "Project")_
|
| Basically the fact that the world's most predominant
| installation of the site (Nyaa.si) is serving a whole bunch of
| copyrighted materials through torrents makes the code itself
| violate DMCA.
| mayli wrote:
| I guess most user use Chrome to access that site, does it
| making Chrome violate DMCA?
| [deleted]
| dimgl wrote:
| Spoiler alert: it doesn't.
| almaember wrote:
| And neither does it violate any similar law (because not many
| people know, but the DMCA is not an idea from the US, just
| barely the US implementation of the 1996 WIPO treaty), in the
| European Union or anywhere else.
|
| So it really, isn't illegal anywhere (well except obviously
| authoritarian regimes).
| sodality2 wrote:
| It really shouldn't. their argument is probably that
| infringement is the main use case of a torrent tracker.
|
| edit: I don't have access to the taken down repo but maybe not:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25836800
| dahfizz wrote:
| The issue is that (supposedly, we can't know because the repo
| has been taken down) the code was pre-configured to host
| copyrighted material. From the complaint:
|
| > The identified files and code are preconfigured to find and
| provide infringing copies of our Members' film and tv content
| to Nyaa.si users in violation of copyright law.
|
| I don't know if they mean that the code is preconfigured to
| connect to a torrent network which is known to host
| copyrighted material, or if there was a
| host_copyrighted_contet.cfg file, etc. Its hard to know how
| much they are stretching the truth because the code is gone.
| sodality2 wrote:
| Agreed, that's what I just commented before reading this
| reply. They are very loose with their words in takedowns. I
| bet it's probably not as bad as they say, though. Maybe it
| has a movie/TV API that it uses, thus is "preconfigured to
| find and provide infringing copies of our Members' film and
| tv content".
| bluGill wrote:
| In which case it should be easy to show the non-infringing
| uses. Many linux distributions have torrent downloads just as
| one example.
| sodality2 wrote:
| Agree. Whether or not the boomers in congress and lobbyists
| in the MPAA/RIAA care, though, is another question
| bluGill wrote:
| The courts have a different standard though, and so it is
| much easier to get them to see. DMCA also is submitted
| under penalty of perjury, so if there is no infringement,
| then the courts can take criminal action against the
| accuser.
|
| I'm not clear on exactly what is being claimed so I don't
| know how real it is in this case.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > DMCA also is submitted under penalty of perjury
|
| No, it's not, except for the claim to copyright ownership
| of the allegedly infringed work. Particularly, the claim
| of infringement is not made under penalty of perjury
| (which makes some sense, as it is a legal and not a
| factual claim, but you don't have to allege the factual
| basis for the claim of infringement under penalty of
| perjury, either.)
| ubercow13 wrote:
| Next is mpv I'm guessing
| TheBill wrote:
| I don't think it does - I think this is just a grab to see what
| microsoft caves on.
| room500 wrote:
| It is stated in the complaint:
|
| > Specifically, at the URL, the Repository hosts and offers for
| download the Project, which, when downloaded, provides the
| downloader everything necessary to launch and host a "clone"
| infringing website identical to Nyaa.si (and, thus, engage in
| massive infringement of copyrighted motion pictures and
| television shows).
|
| This is not a generic BitTorrent tracker. This is source code
| for duplicating the nyaa.si website (which in the github source
| code, they state is "A BitTorrent community focused on Eastern
| Asian media including anime, manga, music, and more" [1]).
|
| I think it would be a stretch to say you are interested in this
| source code so you could then rip out large pieces of it to
| host your Linux ISO's on...
|
| I agree that some DMCA crosses the line. But in this case, I
| don't see a legitimate use for this source code other than
| enabling copyright infringement.
|
| [1]
| https://github.com/seco/nyaa-1/blob/master/nyaa/templates/ho...
| appleflaxen wrote:
| all of those topics can have legitimate, non-infringing
| content; such as fan fiction released under a permissive
| license.
| Hamuko wrote:
| It's a torrent index with search, categories, user management
| and so on. I don't see how I can't use this for hosting Linux
| ISOs by just renaming the categories.
| wilshire_nc wrote:
| I never saw the repo, but to play devil's advocate it's
| possible that there's a unit test or something that downloads
| copyrighted material. That's what got youtube-dl taken down.
| sodality2 wrote:
| Doubt, there would be no reason for it to be copyrighted
| material, it would just be a torrent test
| cjaybo wrote:
| Couldn't the same thing have been said for the problematic
| youtube-dl test case?
| Macha wrote:
| The issue with the youtube-dl case was that certain
| copyrighted video pages did have a different structure,
| so they needed to test they could parse that page
| correctly.
|
| There's no technical difference between a torrent
| containing ArchLinux.iso and TheBeatlesDiscography.zip
| however.
| sodality2 wrote:
| Those directly downloaded copyrighted youtube videos. It
| would instead be just a torrent tracker connection check,
| no reason to even transfer a file, since the tracker just
| matches user with user and doesn't touch any files.
| Const-me wrote:
| Not exactly. They had a test that saves a file from
| YouTube that was "protected" with some tech a lawyer
| might quality as DRM. YouTube only uses that thing for
| copyrighted materials.
|
| Torrents don't have anything like that. You don't have to
| deal with anything copyrighted to test any related stuff,
| be it client, tracker, or web server.
| f311a wrote:
| You clearly didn't read the DMCA
| sodality2 wrote:
| I'm just saying that if a unit test existed, that's
| likely _not_ what would cause the DMCA. seems that the
| reason is that it 's preconfigured to share copyrighted
| content, so like I said, not the unit tests.
| pluc wrote:
| It shouldn't, and we can't know what was in the offending files
| because they've been removed.
|
| > For the avoidance of any doubt, we are also providing you
| with the attached file tilted "GitHub_code_Nyaa" which shows
| code hosted on GitHub that provides all of the source code,
| templates, and utility API tools needed to host a copy of the
| Nyaa.si Bittorrent site, used to access infringing copies of
| motion pictures and television shows for which Nyaa.si provides
| torrent files and magnet links for the infringing content that
| users are looking for. The identified files and code are
| preconfigured to find and provide infringing copies of our
| Members' film and tv content to Nyaa.si users in violation of
| copyright law.
|
| That's the real issue, but again it's hard to discuss since the
| files have been removed.
| phh wrote:
| > Can someone knowledgeable explain to me how a tracker source
| code violates DMCA?
|
| > What's next, hard disk manufacturers? Internet providers?
|
| Hard drives are already taxed in France because of piracy (well
| not exactly, but that's the real reason)
| bdowling wrote:
| Technically, the code is alleged to violate _copyright_ , not
| DMCA. A DMCA notice is just the process that copyright owners
| use to tell service providers about allegedly infringing
| content.
|
| The argument is for contributory copyright infringement via
| inducement, ala _MGM v Grokster_ 545 U.S. 913 (2005) or
| _Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. v. Fung_ 710 F.3d 1020 (9th
| Cir. 2013), the isoHunt case. Inducement occurs where someone
| distributes a device with the intent of promoting infringement
| and actual infringement occurs. Here, the argument is that nyaa
| intends to promote copyright infringement because it provides a
| tool that is tailored for copyright infringement. The notice
| letter cites various references in the code to nyaa.si. Exhibit
| A of the letter comprises "a series of screenshots taken from
| the Nyaa.si website for the Project that include images of
| copyrighted works available through the Project." The
| implication here is that the devs here are encouraging similar
| use of the code for infringing copyright.
|
| I'm not saying I agree with it, but that's their argument.
| tmpxgdqrcKFuG wrote:
| By name it wouldn't but they link to several files where the
| "offending code" resides, so if they're using examples where
| someone is downloading a movie then that would prompt for a
| DMCA.
| [deleted]
| wolrah wrote:
| Based on the way certain files are listed in the complaint I
| suspect this is something along the lines of what happened with
| youtube-dl where there's some part of the test suite, some
| example, or even some comment in the code that refers to a
| copyrighted work.
|
| With the repo down I obviously can't verify this hypothesis but
| it fits.
| ratww wrote:
| _> What 's next, hard disk manufacturers? Internet providers?_
|
| You're joking, but in some countries there are taxes on blank
| recording media:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy
| La1n wrote:
| And in the Netherlands those _used to_ make sense. As
| downloading copyrighted material was legal for personal use
|
| https://mashable.com/2014/04/10/downloading-pirated-
| content-...
| Hamuko wrote:
| I think the basis is that you're still allowed to make
| private copies of CDs/DVDs/etc pretty much throughout EU.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Introduce levy to cover for people copying stuff, then
| introduce copy protection and anti-circumvention laws so
| copying becomes illegal. Continue to collect levy.
| Ingenious.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| Some countries including the USA, for those who haven't
| bothered reading the link.
|
| This is why decades ago you could buy blank CDR media
| designated for "music" at a slightly higher price. They are
| identical to "computer" CDRs, but the seller pays a fee to
| the copyright office.
| m4rtink wrote:
| In the Czech Republic you need to pay this levy on blank
| media (see point number 1 & 6 on
| https://www.mkcr.cz/frequently-asked-
| questions-953.html?lang...) to a shadowy state mandated
| cartel of "designated rightholders" where the money preaty
| much disappears from the face of the Earth.
|
| AFAIK there is no way around it, even in professional
| environment - we build a couple hard drives for a an internal
| company server and this levy was clearly marked there.
|
| Same thing for all the other extortion money they extract
| from music festivals, pubs, hotels, radio stations, etc. -
| they do use some of it to bribe the most prominent and vocal
| old school artists to basically do advertising for their
| cause but the rest safely hits their coffers.
| xtracto wrote:
| This reminded me of the Russian/ROMS/AllOfMp3 saga. That
| was a service way ahead of its time... Even now it is
| difficult to find such a good catalogue of music in
| lossless format.
| elliottlan wrote:
| Pathetic!
| [deleted]
| inopinatus wrote:
| The Streisand Effect is a marvelous thing.
| minitoar wrote:
| Haha love the alembic migration in the mix there.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I think the only solution is self-hosting. Would a hosting
| provider (excluding AWS, given recent news) comply with these
| baseless requests?
|
| I'm personally done with Github.
|
| Gitlab is a bit too heavy to run but I can live with Trello and
| my own git server - all my OSS projects I care about have their
| own website anyway (ironically, moving from Github Pages to
| Netlify will be the most annoying part).
| fabianhjr wrote:
| > Gitlab is a bit too heavy to run
|
| For personal repos it would probably be better to go with Gitea
| or a similar lightweight forge.
|
| https://gitea.io/
| donmcronald wrote:
| For small or independent developers Gitea is really nice. The
| thing with GitHub and (especially) GitLab is they're really
| focused on enterprise customers, so, if you're a small
| developer, you get forced into using all the bloat that only
| makes sense once you need a ton of collaboration.
|
| I hope Cloudflare pages ends up being as good as the sales
| pitch. It looks promising if it does.
| fabianhjr wrote:
| As for static page hosting, it is better to just use IPFS +
| Cloudflare Gateway via CNAME.
|
| It has been working great for over a year now. (Eg, my
| unmaintained but truely serverless blog:
| https://fabian.social/posts/2020-11-07-ipfs-blogging.html)
| znpy wrote:
| cool, I didn't know about nyaa.si and now I know.
| matthewmorgan wrote:
| We need a bonfire of these rentseekers
| kleiba wrote:
| No, we need to show strong opposition but using civil and
| democratic means.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| To play devil's advocate: how, when they won't let us?
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| That's extreme and violent. We can do better than this.
|
| As someone who makes money selling software, I think we should
| abolish copyright and let these companies give contracts to
| their users which bind them not to share the songs and movies
| they bought.
|
| Then it's up to the company to report when actual violation is
| occurring and bring, in a fair court case, whether a certain
| user shared the material or not, breaching their contract with
| the company.
|
| If you access material shared breaching a contract you're not
| doing anything illegal.
|
| If you're selling passively too many copies that enforcing all
| these contracts is too problematic or expensive, you can
| consider it a natural market tax on the huge profits you're
| making.
|
| We shouldn't give shortcuts for companies to enforce their
| copyright, they have this problem specifically because they are
| the richest 1%.
| mmastrac wrote:
| The MPA seems to be getting braver with these takedowns,
| considering how quickly the youtube-dl one got flipped around.
| This one seems particularly shaky as you could not use it to
| explicitly download anything - rather to host data of your own
| (with no explicit requirement for it to be unauthorized copyright
| violation).
|
| EDIT: perhaps just a ploy to unmask the authors of the torrent
| site?
| boogies wrote:
| The youtube-dl demands were from the RIAA (Recording Industry
| Artist's Association). This is from the MPA (Motion Picture
| Association), the only one of the three major supporters of
| SOPA and PIPA that GitHub's parent company (Microsoft) is not
| an official member of (the third is the ESA -- Entertainment
| Software Association).
| niea_11 wrote:
| I think they already know the guys behind the website. From an
| article [1] mentioned by [2] :
|
| _Documents obtained by TorrentFreak dated September reveal the
| MPA, acting through legal representatives, attempting to
| pressure individuals who they believe are important at Nyaa and
| could have the ability to shut the site down._
|
| ...
|
| _While emailed threats are still a common anti-piracy
| strategy, we are informed that at least two of the individuals
| were personally served with legal documents at their homes.
| Others were served with similar documents via regular mail._
|
| [1] : https://torrentfreak.com/mpa-lawyers-are-trying-to-shut-
| down...
|
| [2] : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25836709
| molticrystal wrote:
| The Nyaa.si devs addressed those notices described in the
| torrentfreak article on their twitter back in November:
|
| > To briefly address this, we have no plans to shutdown or
| quit at this time. If we do choose to shutdown eventually we
| will make a public database dump for any successor entity to
| use, we will not be just disappearing like our predecessor
| site leaving everyone else on their own. [0]
|
| > By the way what the fuck is an "anime cartel" MPA? Do we
| sell cocaine now in your head-canon? Please limit your fanfic
| posting in public, it is giving me second hand embarrassment.
| [1]
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/NyaaV2/status/1324168129522511872
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/NyaaV2/status/1324171441479196672
| Hamuko wrote:
| > _EDIT: perhaps just a ploy to unmask the authors of the
| torrent site?_
|
| Who needs to respond to the DMCA claim with a GitHub repo? If
| I'd contributed to the source code repository but wasn't
| involved with hosting the site (I imagine there's quite a few
| of these), can I file a counter claim?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Github needs to go on the offensive and begin to take action
| against fraudulent DMCA notices, including justification to
| seek damages for these claims.
| slg wrote:
| IANAL, but I am pretty sure Microsoft has little recourse
| here. The requests would need to be knowingly fraudulent for
| recourse and that is a huge hurdle to prove that the MPA is
| knowingly acting in bad faith rather than just being
| overaggressive.
|
| The DMCA desperately needs to be reworked at the very least.
| cataphract wrote:
| If they can be sure there is no copyright violation, then
| what would the downside be? By not acting on the DMCA
| notice, they would lose their safe harbor, which would be
| inconsequential.
| contravariant wrote:
| Well the material in question here is without a doubt not
| copyrighted by the MPA.
|
| And the safe harbour provision only protects Github from
| hosting or referring people to infringing material, or
| material that's "subject to infringing activity" (which
| is different from what's being claimed here as nyaa is
| very clearly the _object_ ).
|
| That said the DMCA contains all kinds of vague phrases,
| such as
|
| > linking users to an online location containing [...]
| infringing activity
|
| whatever the hell that may mean.
| slg wrote:
| The downside is that the safe harbor protections apply to
| the entire site. Even if this content is fine, there is
| certainly some content on GitHub that violates copyright
| and Microsoft would want safe harbor protections in those
| instances. They therefore can't completely abandon the
| DMCA.
|
| My understanding is that in order to continue
| participating in the DMCA the recipient needs to act on
| all requests. That doesn't necessarily mean they need to
| take down the content, just that they need to respond to
| requests.
|
| There is also no penalty setup within the DMCA for
| sending a request in which the response is that the
| content is not in violation. The only part of the DMCA
| that sets up penalties for the requester is if the
| requests are made in bad faith. That basically would
| require Microsoft to show the MPA is malicious in their
| requests rather than incompetent. That can be difficult
| to prove.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> The downside is that the safe harbor protections apply
| to the entire site. Even if this content is fine, there
| is certainly some content on GitHub that violates
| copyright and Microsoft would want safe harbor
| protections in those instances.
|
| Hey! Finally a legal reason not to have massive
| centralization! OK my enthusiasm is exaggerated.
| sodality2 wrote:
| >If they can be sure there is no copyright violation
|
| Will they think that, though? I doubt they would take the
| risk.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| You don't go after the MPA. You bring charges against their
| lawyers who are acting in bad faith and submitting
| fraudulent documents.
| monadic3 wrote:
| Or, you write anti-trust legislation to make their
| predatory behavior illegal. They can certainly afford to
| buy off politicians.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Github = Microsoft.
| daheza wrote:
| Agreed that Github needs to push back, but we should also be
| contacting our legislature so that they are aware of the
| abuse of law.
| kodah wrote:
| This has been an issue, and has been lobbied for, for at
| least two decades. The law may do us favors one day but
| that day is far into the future.
| ballenf wrote:
| Has there been even a single move away from ever more
| draconian copyright? Just the last budget bill had
| provisions for more criminal enforcement of copyright and
| with bipartisan support. If this is a slippery slope it's
| a steady and worryingly unstoppable one so far.
|
| Civil disobedience through distributed systems seems like
| the only answer right now.
|
| Your legislators can't hear you over the sound of
| millions of dollars from Hollywood getting deposited in
| their campaign accounts.
| astrange wrote:
| Corporations can't donate to campaigns, they can only
| collect voluntary donations from employees and only
| donate $5000 per campaign.
|
| And Microsoft does donate to all the ones you don't like,
| so on this theory they'd be doing GitHub's bidding.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The future may arrive soon:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHypmOp8AdM
| TheDong wrote:
| Whether we contact our representatives or not, the MPA /
| Disney / etc have deeper pockets than we do.
|
| We've reached the point where a candidate for the senate
| will only get the nomination and have a chance to be
| elected if they spend a significant amount of money on
| their campaign. There's no campaign limits, so if you don't
| spend much, you're liable to lose.
|
| As a result, the people who run successful campaigns almost
| always have already agreed to side with the MPA and other
| interests that have money.
|
| Us telling our legislature we're not happy about it won't
| help either because, well, what are we going to do? Vote
| for the person on the other party? Not likely. Vote for
| another guy? It's unlikely anyone else will even be on the
| ballot since both the democrats and republicans will avoid
| having multiple candidates to avoid splitting the vote
| within the party.
|
| I agree that the problem is really legal at its root, but I
| think we need better plans than "contact your
| representative".
| userbinator wrote:
| ...and don't forget that the incoming president has a
| definite position on IP and copyright that many here are
| probably opposed to:
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2008/08/25/joe-biden-obamas-
| running-m...
|
| In fact I'd go as far as saying quite a few of the events
| of the past few days are precisely due to this upcoming
| change of government.
| astrange wrote:
| This year many high profile campaigns that spent the most
| money also lost, and the ones that won by spending the
| most were not "corporate" but were Bernie aligned.
| TheDong wrote:
| While you may be able to point to one or two anomalies,
| we need more than that. If the MPA has the ear of 70% of
| congress, that's still enough to have their way on
| legislation, regardless of a few fringe elements.
|
| As far as I can tell, there's not a large trend that this
| is changing currently. The candidate that spends the most
| still wins 70-80% of the time:
| https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/winning-
| vs-sp...
|
| The cost of running a winning campaign has steadily
| increased as well: https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-
| overview/election-tren...
|
| Those trends, to me, do not paint a compelling story that
| things are different now.
| colonwqbang wrote:
| Your conclusion that receiving funding =>
| being popular => winning
|
| is not necessarily incorrect. But it is also possible
| that it is the other way around: being
| popular => receiving funding => winning
|
| I.e. candidates which are more popular tend to have an
| easier time receiving funding. Or, it could be some
| combination. This would also explain the outcomes you
| point to.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Sanders, despite some reformist tendencies, is a also
| corporate-aligned. He is a staunch supporter of the
| Democratic Party and of its pro-corporate leadership;
| supports the military-industrial complex and most (not
| all) of its foreign interventions; and recently voted for
| the CARES act, which transferred huge amounts of wealth
| to large corporations.
|
| Those "Bernie-aligned" elected members of the house have
| just recently chosen to support Hundred-Millionaire house
| member Nanci Pelosi for speaker of the house. They did
| not even do this in exchange for anything. Other Bernie-
| aligned representatives, already in office before this
| year, have also neglected to act against their pro-
| corporate party line.
|
| So, the moneyed elites can indirectly win even if they
| ostensibly lose.
| astrange wrote:
| > and recently voted for the CARES act, which transferred
| huge amounts of wealth to large corporations.
|
| That was a payroll support program like every other
| country did, plus airline bailouts which were good
| because they have giant union contracts.
|
| CARES is the greatest anti-poverty measure the US has
| done in a hundred years and probably the largest downward
| transfer of wealth in the world. You didn't notice
| because all left-wing commentators decided to lie about
| it ("we only got $1200 checks") instead of reading about
| how the unemployment benefit worked.
|
| https://twitter.com/jdcmedlock/status/1322348938339389441
| alasdair_ wrote:
| >He is a staunch supporter of the Democratic Party
|
| I'd consider this debatable. He isn't even a member of
| the Democratic Party, he just caucuses with them.
| bluGill wrote:
| Deep pockets are only useful as a proxy for getting
| people to vote. What means more than deep packets is
| votes. If we can bring in votes that is far more powerful
| than money.
|
| So get out there and convince voters that this is an
| important topic. The law will change fast if congress
| decides that not changing it will mean they are thrown
| out and some other person who will replaces them. So long
| as they think few people care it will get lib service.
| (also so long as there seem to be a signification amount
| of people on the other side nothing will change)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| True, but that's a longer "sales cycle" (election cycles
| are usually every 2-4 years) if you will. Tactical response
| vs strategic response.
| newsclues wrote:
| A full war needs to be waged, at the tactical and
| strategic level, for (digital) freedom.
| afavour wrote:
| It's weird that we expect Github to do that, in a way. The
| repo might well be hosted on there for free, but we all want
| Github to spend a ton in legal fees to defend something they
| make zero cash from.
|
| I'm not sure what my point is here other than finding it sad
| that code hosting is so centralised.
| wolco5 wrote:
| We do. We want to see github or anyone defend any fake
| lawsuit against them.
| astrange wrote:
| Good thing there aren't any lawsuits against anyone then.
| themacguffinman wrote:
| I think it's in Github's interests to push back on this.
| MPA's dubious legal requests likely cost Github time,
| money, and PR to resolve properly. It adds up over time and
| I doubt any company wants to be caught in the middle of an
| arms-race conflict like this, nipping it in the bud could
| very well be worth the upfront legal fees.
| Hamuko wrote:
| I imagine MPA would also be emboldened by this if Github
| removes the Nyaa repository forever on what is basically
| a pretty flimsy basis ("Nyaa.si uses the code and that's
| a piracy website so the code itself is piracy").
|
| What's next? Transmission and rtorrent?
| wongarsu wrote:
| Github's market position is in no small part based on
| network effects and depends on nearly every open source
| project being hosted there.
|
| Now imagine a competitor promising some kind of protection
| against these kinds of frivolous DMCAs. That could lead to
| a large chunk of media, p2p and security software moving
| there, threatening Github's position in those niches and
| putting that competitor on more equal footing.
| c0d4h wrote:
| A better way would be to start excluding MPA and their
| behaviour in our open source licenses.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| >A better way would be to start excluding MPA and their
| behaviour in our open source licenses.
|
| This is a remarkably good idea. Add an explicit clause to
| major open source project licenses that disallow use by
| the MPAA and similar groups, along with enough explicit
| damages spelled out to give it teeth.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Anything requires MSFT legal review, so it'll be at the very
| least 24 hours or so before they can make decisions like not
| honoring DMCA complaints.
| fartcannon wrote:
| Microsoft would never do that unless their hands were forced.
| Too much potential business with them.
|
| We could try forcing their hands by removing all our code
| from Github?
| behringer wrote:
| I use gitlab, myself.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| More effective would be those who are at orgs paying for
| Github Enterprise to express to their account managers
| they'll take their business elsewhere if Github is unable
| to defend it's platform from malicious actors.
|
| Github don't care if you take your code elsewhere. They
| _most definitely_ care about revenue (and developer
| mindshare a somewhat close second).
| _jal wrote:
| Such a claim is pretty weak, actually. MS would not be
| held responsible for code in someone's GHE instance any
| more than they would for a movie stored on an NTFS file
| system.
|
| So the sales rep is likely just going to be confused by
| the attempt to use unrelated leverage.
| almaember wrote:
| No, but GHE is paid software. And not like it's
| impossible to migrate, it's just a fancy git frontend
| after all. Gogs/Gitea/Gitlab CE is completely capable of
| doing what it does.
| DCKing wrote:
| > Microsoft would never do that unless their hands were
| forced. Too much potential business with them.
|
| The upside of Microsoft's acquisition of GitHub (and the
| entire strategy that resulted in the acquisition) is that
| Microsoft has created incentives for themselves to have
| GitHub being regarded as a truly open platform that you can
| depend on. Having repositories exposed to flimsy DMCA
| takedowns is not part of that.
|
| Microsoft, very transparently, wants to make money by being
| important in how people develop software. If exposure to
| flimsy takedowns is a part of GitHub, then people will be
| more motivated to send their money to GitLab, Atlassian's
| stuff, or a bunch of other options. They have legitimate
| competition here.
|
| Developer's opinions of GitHub and Microsoft in general may
| be of more longer term importance to them than the MPAA's
| opinion of them. I'm not saying that that is definitely the
| case (maybe they're still getting there), but it's worth
| acknowledging that Microsoft has legitimate _actual cold
| money_ reasons to fight this. No need to rely only on
| personal convictions of the people at GitHub.
| fartcannon wrote:
| I bet Microsoft can have it's cake and eat it, too. If
| enough github users are willing to defend them, they can
| placate both parties.
|
| Microsoft should be paying us to use github.
| lstamour wrote:
| The occasional prominent developer has left GitHub for
| GitLab, but it hasn't made much of a difference. I don't
| see organizations moving off GitHub if they're already
| using it. I think GitHub is independent enough from
| Microsoft that the two could take different stances on
| these disputes. Certainly I'd expect a DMCA takedown of
| content on a Microsoft service like OneDrive to be
| ultimately handled differently from a takedown aimed at
| source code on GitHub...
| fartcannon wrote:
| Github is as independent from Microsoft as WhatsApp is
| from Facebook.
| munk-a wrote:
| Thankfully I am not yet required to sign on to github
| using 2FA that can only be confirmed on a Zune. Microsoft
| has been pretty good at leveraging github for the
| publicity of supporting developers (hosting informational
| streams and the like) while leaving the platform pretty
| independent.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft viewed Github like
| McDonalds views the Ronald McDonald House - a long term
| PR investment that's well worth the marginal cost.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > Thankfully I am not yet required to sign on to github
| using 2FA that can only be confirmed on a Zune.
|
| Strawman: Microsoft doesn't require you to come from
| their hardware for any of their properties, and of course
| Zune is a dead platform.
| blahblah12 wrote:
| Wrong, Microsoft's internal incentives are aligned with
| GitHub remaining independent and building developer
| mindshare. The, relatively, minuscule business they get
| from MPA (No Azure, Office subs, Windows subs) is extremely
| fringe in comparison to losing long term developer
| mindshare. Even if you thought of representative companies
| in the MPA,e.g., Netflix, Warner, etc., which are only
| loosely coupled to the MPA itself, this is still tiny in
| contrast to overall developer mindshare. This is why they
| reinstated popcorntime etc etc.
| einpoklum wrote:
| I'm anxiously waiting for a quit-GitHub movement. I hold my
| source code there because of its popularity and
| "defaultish" nature. Of course I can go someplace else
| right now, but then people won't find my software.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| You can make GH be just a mirror
| proverbialbunny wrote:
| When it comes to case law, they have to show intent, and the
| way they do that is they have to show their software is used
| for more than just piracy.
|
| So, eg, if it's generic torrent tracker software, it's fine,
| because anyone can use it in a legitimate way (though it helps
| if someone actually is using it in a legitimate way), but if
| this is just for the site nyaa.si and no other trackers, they
| might lose this case if it goes to court.
| hedora wrote:
| Sooner or later, one of these projects will counter-sue for
| misuse of copyright.
|
| Misuse of copyright is when a copyright holder attempts to
| illegitimately expand the rights granted to them by their
| copyright in some work (in this case, quashing competition from
| distribution channels that are used to distribute unrelated
| copyrighted material).
|
| The normal punishment for misuse of copyright is the rendering
| of the copyright unenforceable. The letter clearly sets the
| scope of the copyrights that would be at stake in this case:
|
| " each of the major motion picture studios in the United
| States, specifically, Paramount Pictures Corporation, Sony
| Pictures Entertainment Inc., Universal City Studios LLC, Warner
| Bros. Entertainment Inc., Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures,
| Netflix Studios, LLC, and their respective affiliates
| (collectively, the "MPA Member Studios"), which own or control
| exclusive rights under copyright in and to a vast number of
| motion pictures and television shows."
|
| I'm not a lawyer, but misuse of copyright / trademark should be
| covered in any decent introduction to intellectual property law
| course. The MPA lawyers are either incompetent or working under
| the assumption that their clients are invincible / above the
| law.
|
| I think pushing back on this take down notice would be a slam
| dunk case.
| c2h5oh wrote:
| Actually no. DMCA is super one sided.
|
| All you need for DMCA takedown notice is "a good faith
| belief" that reported content is infringing copyright you own
| (or is owned by someone you represent).
|
| The opposing party has to prove that the claim was knowingly
| false and malicious for the claimant to be charged with
| perjury.
|
| The opposing party has to prove actual damages in court to
| get any compensation. You may get legal fees back too (up to
| the court), but that's only likely to happen if it's obvious
| at the first glance that the claim was bogus.
|
| This is all you can do to someone filing the notice. Notice
| doesn't even establish a jurisdiction (and cease-and-desist
| letter does) - so you can't counter-sue in your jurisdiction
| to get declaratory judgment that copyright is invalid.
| Accujack wrote:
| Right. The DMCA was written with the advice of the
| copyright holders' lawyers (and by them in some cases) and
| activists and others fought against it as hard as they
| could.
|
| Even in 1998, the US government was corrupted by money.
| It's worse today, but this has been happening a long time.
| AWildC182 wrote:
| I suspect one could make a case, given the history of the
| MPA/MPAA that they've left both the realm of "good faith"
| and "belief" long ago. Each incident doesn't get to occur
| in a vacuum. You can't claim blissful ignorance forever.
| sebastien_b wrote:
| Could GitHub mount a case on this - that they (MPA) have
| been making so many of these these bogus 'good faith
| belief' requests over time that those words don't
| actually have any meaning anymore to them, and as such
| have been lying through their teeth when making them now?
|
| That would make it interesting...
| c2h5oh wrote:
| Is there a history of bad faith claims in the courts? I
| suspect there isn't or at best very limited. It goes like
| this:
|
| 1. MPA sends a notice, content is taken down/disabled
|
| 2a) No response to takedown notice is sent, because the
| next step MPA can take after that is to take you to
| court. If you win the best case scenario is you recover
| your legal costs (but not the time). Content stays down.
|
| 2b) A response to takedown notice is sent, content gets
| restored. MPA doesn't go to court, unless it's a slam
| dunk case or it's important enough to bully someone into
| submission with legal costs (you pay those out of your
| pocket with hope of maybe getting most of it back at some
| point, possibly years later). Victim doesn't go to court
| for compensation, because it's almost certain that even
| with a resounding win what they recover is going to be
| less than legal fees.
|
| The actual number of cases that see the courtroom is
| likely very, very small.
| AWildC182 wrote:
| IANAL but best I can tell it is with regards to filing
| the takedown notice rather than taking them to court. If
| it is just the sending of a takedown notice, then holy
| fuck have they abused it.
| einpoklum wrote:
| IANAL, and my limited legal knowledge is not of US law.
|
| However, if you have copyrights which are of vast economic
| significance, to a very large number of copyrighted works, it
| seems unlikely that the law would would deprive you of all of
| that due to your suing someone for infringement. That seems
| highly disproportionate.
|
| Now, don't get me wrong, I have no sympathies for the MPAA,
| but are you sure you're not overstating the effect of a
| "misuse of copyright" finding (regardless of the odds of such
| a finding being made)?
| hedora wrote:
| The penalties in these cases have historically been pretty
| disproportionate:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_misuse
|
| In Lasercomb v. Reynolds, and Practice Management
| Information v. American Medical Association the existence
| of an abusive licensing agreement allowed third parties to
| simply violate the copyright.
|
| So, assuming misuse of copyright was found, precedent
| suggests the copyrights that were being misused would be
| rendered unenforceable.
|
| A case finding that bad faith DMCA take downs amounted to
| misuse of copyright would be setting a new legal precedent,
| but, based on the facts in multiple recent DMCA takedowns,
| such a finding wouldn't be a huge logical leap.
| [deleted]
| barkingcat wrote:
| I think the assumption is true in this case, that "their
| clients are invincible / above the law." - they can lobby to
| create the laws themselves (which is what they did to create
| the DMCA in the first place) so they are in effect "above the
| law"
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I'm not a lawyer but this feels like a fantasy to me. It
| seems crazy the MPA would take such a risk if they thought it
| was likely.
| Taniwha wrote:
| It seems to me that they are deliberately conflating
| "infringing someone's copyright" and "using to infringe
| someone's copyright" - there's a difference between "you
| have my copyrighted code in your github" and "you are
| providing software that can be used for copying my movie" -
| the first is what DMCA notices are for, not the second
| busythrowaway22 wrote:
| Seems like they're moving towards thought crime than
| actual crime.
| walrus01 wrote:
| If you're an ISP, fully automated software sends DMCA
| notices for video content copyright violations all the
| time. There's no human in the loop anymore. If you see the
| vast bulk of these notices, a lot of them are spurious.
| It's a GIGO problem.
| monadic3 wrote:
| Presumably that's a much easier for videos than for
| software.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Even more entertaining, the bot has no idea what is or
| isn't legit. Ages ago I received a take-down from "The
| Internet Police" ordering me to remove all the Atari game
| updates from the FTP servers. Thing is, they belonged
| there. Atari paid us to run parts of their site,
| including game updates.
| zeruch wrote:
| You have not met the staff of these orgs. It is actually
| not exaggeration to say they live in a media bubble where
| their studio chiefs are captains of industry that are
| infallible and are to be served with total fealty.
|
| I once sat in a meeting where some VP at a major client
| asked (because they were technically daft) if it was
| possible -in not so many words- DDOS google because "they
| (google) have all this infringing content on their site"
|
| I had to tell me boss "is anyone going to explain to that
| guy that what he's describing is A. not realistic and B.
| not legal?"
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > studio chiefs are captains of industry that are
| infallible and are to be served with total fealty
|
| Harvey Weinstein was taken down. I wonder if others will
| be.
| sjy wrote:
| You can't "counter-sue" for misuse of copyright, nor is it a
| "normal punishment." It's a defence you can use to avoid
| liability when someone else sues you, and an exceptional one
| at that [1]. As noted on Wikipedia, the court in Lasercomb
| [2] made it clear that copyright misuse does not render the
| copyright permanently unenforceable:
|
| > This holding, of course, is not an invalidation of
| Lasercomb's copyright. Lasercomb is free to bring a suit for
| infringement once it has purged itself of the misuse.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_misuse
|
| [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20100516061057/http://bulk.re
| sou...
| bagacrap wrote:
| The case seems to rest on this precedent:
|
| """ See Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc. v. Grokster Ltd., 545
| U.S. 913, 940 n.13 (2005) ("the distribution of a product can
| itself give rise to liability where evidence shows that the
| distributor intended and encouraged the product to be used to
| infringe") """
| CodesInChaos wrote:
| From the complaint it sounds like this repository doesn't just
| contain the code of a tracker, but also of a torrent
| search/indexing site (similar to the pirate bay website). The
| urls listed as infringing seem mostly be related to this website,
| not a tracker.
|
| I think the argument is that nyaa.si is clearly designed for
| piracy, and the code is specific to that website evidenced by its
| url being embedded all over the codebase.
| h_anna_h wrote:
| While I am against DMCAs I find it amusing to be honest, it is
| kinda like karma. The nyaa.si people commonly engaged in
| censorship of their issue tracker at github (even if all parties
| were polite and the issue was closed they ended up locking and
| deleting issues afterwards). In addition in their early days they
| engaged in a "fake news" campaign against the other nyaa clone
| (nyaa.si is a clone of the original nyaa). Finally they never
| provided their database to the public, so if it dies or if
| someone wants to make another clone they have to scrape the whole
| site. (there was a lot of drama when the original nyaa died
| because nobody had an updated database and they had to work with
| an outdated one. The other nyaa clone offered a copy of its
| database. When I asked one of the members of nyaa.si I was
| offered a pathetic excuse on how it would be too hard to write an
| sql query).
|
| And to be honest the nyaa.si devs would not care about this whole
| thing at all. They admitted that they published the code to
| github because they were tired of the "foss nerds" whining.
| pixelpoet wrote:
| Feels like a repeat of the DeCSS debacle:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS
|
| On that note, wow do I feel old...
| andrewzah wrote:
| The real WTF here is why a torrent site is hosting its source on
| a site like github in the first place. We all know that societies
| like the MPA flagrantly abuse the law because there are little
| repercussions. The codebase really should have been selfhosted.
| maltalex wrote:
| The title is misleading. This isn't some generic torrent tracker.
| The repo in question is the source of a specific site - nyaa.si
| [0] which according to the complaint is preconfigured to share
| copyrighted material:
|
| > The identified files and code are preconfigured to find and
| provide infringing copies of our Members' film and tv content to
| Nyaa.si users in violation of copyright law.
|
| This is probably what makes this complaint possible.
|
| [0]: https://nyaa.si/
| zucker42 wrote:
| > This is probably what makes this complaint possible.
|
| What makes this complaint possible is that the MPA blatantly
| expands the scope of copyright, counting on their large legal
| budget and the skewed possible consequences to discourage
| people from fighting back.
|
| The MPA doesn't care whether this repo actually infringes on
| their copyright, nor whether the DMCA allows them to issue a
| takedown request. They only care that this will hurt people who
| oppose their interests and that there is little practical
| recourse.
| jchw wrote:
| Please don't, however, baselessly propagate their claims. As
| far as I can tell it's bullshit. The source code may be for
| nyaa.si but it just contains normal torrent tracker code.
|
| Take a look at the files listed:
|
| >
| https://github.com/nyaadevs/nyaa/blob/master/utils/api_info....
|
| Online here:
| https://gitlab.com/SIGBUS/nyaa/-/blob/master/utils/api_info....
|
| See anything remotely suggestive? Not I.
|
| >
| https://github.com/nyaadevs/nyaa/blob/master/utils/api_uploa...
|
| Nothing interesting here either.
|
| >
| https://github.com/nyaadevs/nyaa/blob/master/nyaa/static/sea...
|
| Why did they pick the search entry XML for the porn section???
| (I can only assume their lawyers have no idea what 'sukebei'
| means.) Anyway, nothing interesting in this file either.
|
| >
| https://github.com/nyaadevs/nyaa/blob/master/nyaa/api_handle...
|
| Again, looks ENTIRELY generic.
|
| > https://github.com/nyaadevs/nyaa/blob/master/.docker/nyaa-
| co...
|
| It's a config file with some credentials in it. Again, nothing.
|
| >
| https://github.com/nyaadevs/nyaa/blob/master/nyaa/torrents.p...
|
| More generic looking Flask code.
|
| >
| https://github.com/nyaadevs/nyaa/blob/master/nyaa/templates/...
|
| Again... it's a very basic looking HTML template.
|
| >
| https://github.com/nyaadevs/nyaa/blob/master/migrations/vers...
|
| Just about the least interesting database migration ever.
|
| >
| https://github.com/nyaadevs/nyaa/blob/master/config.example....
|
| I'm not even sure why they would pick this file, seriously. At
| this point they're just making shit up.
|
| >
| https://github.com/nyaadevs/nyaa/blob/master/.docker/es_sync...
|
| And another random config file.
|
| If there's even a smidgen of actual copyright infringement in
| this repo, they failed to find it.
| nemothekid wrote:
| They DCMA doesn't say that the repo was used to host
| copyrighted material:
|
| > _The identified files and code are preconfigured to find
| and provide infringing copies of our Members' film and tv
| content to Nyaa.si users in violation of copyright law._
|
| They are basically saying "this is the codebase for nyaa.si,
| and as proof here are a bunch of files that prove that
| assertion". What I _don 't_ understand is the legal grounds
| they have to compel GitHub to remove the repository. It would
| be like if I removed ffmpeg from github because
| freestreams.tv was using it to power their backend.
| jchw wrote:
| I understand that, but those files do not show that the
| repo is preconfigured to host copyrighted files. I don't
| get what the search XML or database migration is supposed
| to prove for example.
|
| All they have demonstrated is that it is the source code
| for nyaa.si. I don't get how that is enough to do anything.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| "preconfigured to find and provide infringing copies" goes
| way beyond a mere claim of being the codebase.
| jsmith45 wrote:
| I'd say that first one (api_info) is semi-plausible in terms
| of being "configured" for piracy, in that it hard codes the
| production API of the site, and I assume the data accessible
| therein is largely piracy.
|
| It is also true that one would need to modify quite a few
| places to make this codebase sensibly usable for anything
| non-piracy. Even if an Anime studio decided to make their
| back catalog available over torrent (for some reason), this
| site really is not designed for their needs.
|
| However, I strongly suspect this list of files is roughly the
| set that have 'nyaa' as a stand alone word (i.e. not part of
| a snake case word or other compound). I suspect they loaded
| the code into a search engine, and searched for "nyaa.si",
| and flagged all results. Many search engines will treat the
| '.' like a space, will filter out "si" as being too short,
| and thus search for "nyaa", and only find results for that
| when it exists as a separate word.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| how about trackers.txt ?
| jchw wrote:
| See, I still think that's innocuous since it does not list
| any particular infringing links. For example, Google has no
| issues showing us opentrackr.org.
|
| And yet, it is completely absent from the DMCA takedown,
| which signals to me that they really did no work at all
| before making this takedown.
| walrus01 wrote:
| a link to a list of trackers it no more illegal than
| publishing the public street address of a business that
| sells products that are illegal in certain jurisdictions
| (texas dildo law, anyone?)
| einpoklum wrote:
| > See anything remotely suggestive?
|
| Maybe. I see: NYAA_HOST = 'https://nyaa.si'
| SUKEBEI_HOST = 'https://sukebei.nyaa.si'
|
| so this is pre-configured to get torrents from a website
| which offers mainly/mostly/only infringing torrents.
|
| Caveat: IANAL.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Possibly due the inclusion of the tracker URLs in the code?
| https://web.archive.org/web/20200917190718/https://github.co...
| livueta wrote:
| You've got a point,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25836800 also points this
| out.
|
| My eye was caught by
|
| > The Project blatantly infringes the MPA Member Studios'
| copyrights and countless other copyrights. Indeed, copyright
| infringement is so prevalent within the Project that
| infringement plainly is its predominant use and purpose.
|
| when submitting, and you could argue that does constitute a
| blanket attack against dual-use products, but the specific
| allegations you cite are also relevant. Since I could still
| edit the title I changed it to "for source code of torrent
| tracker nyaa.si"; hope that's clearer.
| synctext wrote:
| > Specifically, we request that you remove or disable access to
| the infringing Project's repositories referenced herein in
| accordance with either 17 U.S.C. SS 512(c)(3)(A)(ii) (DMCA
| "representative list" provision), 17 U.S.C. SS 512(i)(1)(A) (DMCA
| "repeat infringer" provision), and/or GitHub's Terms of Service,
| which prohibit use of your facilities for copyright infringement,
| ...
|
| So such dual-use technologies are now under pressure. This is
| quite a step towards banning certain mass-dissemination protocols
| in general. See "inducement rule" [1] in the US.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inducement_rule
| formerly_proven wrote:
| MPAA 2: The Streisand Overdrive
| jitendrac wrote:
| Torrents were great threat in past years, but now in world with
| streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime,Hulu and all others
| torrent is not a serious threat. So,that's a baseless argument,
| Its like don't sell knives they can be used to murder. Torrents
| are also useful for many others purposes, like distribution of
| big opensource software, downloading files with unreliable
| connection and slow speed, to distribute things [kind
| of]anonymously peer-peer etc.
| rapfaria wrote:
| Until you are paying for 10 distinct services, and the music
| colossi start to create services of their own.
|
| Who you gonna call? Plex+sonarr
| vorticalbox wrote:
| This is why Netflix was great, it showed the TV world they
| were doing it wrong by having 100's of services rather than
| one with everything.
|
| Now people want a cut of Netflix pie and making the same
| mistake again.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| Maybe unpopular opinion: you don't need to pay for 10
| distinct services at the same time. Like, there's a show that
| I want to watch on Crave, I pay for a month and watch it -
| along with other stuff that might interest me. Then there's
| something else on Starz - I do the same.
|
| 2 concurrent streaming service is good enough for most
| people, I think, specially considering most streaming
| services add full seasons at once, instead of weekly
| episodes. And even in that case, you can just wait a couple
| months until the whole show is available, and spend 10 bucks
| for a month's subscription.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| It definitely adds some friction though. At least for me, I
| would probably just ignore, say, new Disney+ content rather
| than try and go through a whole setup and cancellation
| process. It might be annoying. I might forget. There is a
| reason why "see what subscriptions you're actually using"
| is a frequent first step in programs to rein in your
| personal finance.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| > There is a reason why "see what subscriptions you're
| actually using" is a frequent first step in programs to
| rein in your personal finance.
|
| Oh yeah, absolutely. What I do for anything supposed to
| be temporary, is cancelling after subscribing.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| A music colossus already tried this, and Tidal landed with a
| thud.
|
| People are loyal to artists, not labels, and artists change
| labels on a fairly regular basis. It's not like TV where
| shows generally live and die on a single channel, and maybe
| get salvaged onto a second one.
| bluGill wrote:
| And if not loyal to an artist it is a genera or station.
| Classical music listeners can get Bach from a number of
| different artists, if a few are missing they typically can
| get by with the others. If someone puts a station on
| Pandora it will be a long time before they notice that
| something is missing.
|
| With TV there is a long standing character development to
| get people interested in something in particular. With
| music you often just want a style - though there are
| favorites with particular meaning that you may want.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Even loyalty to an artist is overrated. Tidal had
| exclusivity with some of the biggest names in music with
| dedicated fanbases and this mostly got people to sign up
| for the one-month free trial and cancel.
|
| Beyonce and Jay-Z moved back onto Spotify. This is a
| model that is proven not to work.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| To be fair, there is also a difference between streaming
| shows and music.
|
| For shows, I sit on my couch and either open Netflix or
| Prime Video, and then start the show I'm going to be
| watching the next hour.
|
| For music, I have Spotify playlists for different
| moods/genres. If a specific song/artist is not on
| Spotify, too bad, but I'm not going to stop cooking, wash
| my hands, go to my phone to switch apps, go back to
| cooking, stop again in 10 mins. to go back to Spotify
| password321 wrote:
| They were never a great threat. People actually do like to
| spend money and throw money even at free content.
| jitendrac wrote:
| yup, I agree. They just can't wait for duration and want
| instant access to released content.
| phh wrote:
| A few years ago, I would have agreed. However nowadays I can't
| even list the SVoD offerings in my country, and last time I
| searched (or was Stargate SG1), I couldn't find any offering.
| (One SVoD has it... Only seasons 8 and 9).
| jitendrac wrote:
| yeah, I think telegram has taken the place of torrents for
| this purpose.
| underseacables wrote:
| Is there a mirror?
| erk__ wrote:
| Seems that it is something that MPA have gone after for some time
| they tried to shut down the website late last year.
|
| https://torrentfreak.com/mpa-lawyers-are-trying-to-shut-down...
| francis_t_catte wrote:
| yeah, this reads as more of an attempt against the torrent
| tracker site, rather than the tracker software itself.
| voidwtf wrote:
| I hope GitHub is willing to put a stop to this, seems like a
| stretch.
|
| Where this thread of logic end? Should python be blocked by DMCA
| because it is used to compile code that facilitates copyright
| infringement?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| This nasty industry tried to make the VCR illegal back in the
| day so you're not that far off.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| A lot people on HN probably weren't alive to know that this
| happened. It would do people well to read the testimony given
| before a subcommittee of the House of Representatives back in
| 1983[1] to get some idea of exactly how willing and eager to
| destroy innovation copyright maximalists really are.
|
| Nothing suggests the attitudes motivating the MPAA's lack of
| foresight re: the VCR in 1983, aand their general
| unwillingness to allow anything to upset the status quo, have
| gone anywhere in the ensuing decades.
|
| [1] http://cryptome.org/hrcw-hear.htm
|
| (If nothing else, read Jack Valenti's testimony.)
| f311a wrote:
| Python does not contain preconfiguration that allows you to
| download particular files. The DMCA mentions configs with data
| samples.
| dunefox wrote:
| Personal computers make copyright infringement possible. _They
| need to go_.
| speeder wrote:
| Well... they already succeeded in screwing some hardware and
| software this way.
|
| When Windows Vista was about to launch, MPAA pushed hard for
| DVD copy protection, this resulted in a sudden push against
| CRT monitors, in favor of then lower quality LCD, to force
| the usage of HDMI cables (because they have DRM), they also
| pushed hard for Microsoft to change what soundcards were
| allowed to do, again because of DRM.
|
| This contributed to a sudden death of CRTs right when some
| companies were about to have breakthrough in lightweight CRT,
| and also basically killed the soundcard market... they still
| exist, but nowhere near important as they were, and nowhere
| near awesome, the changes that were pushed to support DRM
| killed 3D Audio, back then you had people buying sound cards
| as if they were like GPUs but for audio, some games used this
| to great effect (Thief for example), where the game would
| raytrace the audio, calculating it reflecting, refracting and
| difracting around the 3D models, allowing for sound
| simulations that let players to figure out the environment by
| audio alone...
|
| Vista came and changed drastically how the driver stack for
| video and audio worked, MS back then blamed "stability" but
| they killed hard anything that could be used to circunvent
| DVD, HDMI and related DRM.
| outworlder wrote:
| > were about to have breakthrough in lightweight CRT
|
| Never heard of this. There's a limit on how lightweight a
| CRT can be, compared to what amounts to essentially a large
| chip. Maybe that wasn't so bad. Also, unless this
| breakthrough no longer used an electron gun, they are power
| hogs.
|
| > to force the usage of HDMI cables
|
| What's preventing one from driving a CRT with a HDMI
| signal? You can generate the analog signals the CRT needs
| quite easily. This is in fact done by dirt cheap dongles
| today.
|
| > where the game would raytrace the audio, calculating it
| reflecting, refracting and difracting around the 3D models,
| allowing for sound simulations that let players to figure
| out the environment by audio alone
|
| Why can't we do this today? This can in fact be done by
| GPUs. Possibly even in the CPU.
|
| The way I understand there are a few reasons why people
| stopped buying sound cards:
|
| * Capabilities such as MIDI and pre-loaded instruments were
| no longer used. Games had more space to burn so they just
| used digitized waveforms
|
| * The built-in audio became "good enough". Any built-in
| cheap can output audio at high sample rates. Decent audio
| can be provided even from the analog outputs, not to
| mention digital signals carried by optical outputs, HDMI,
| Display Port. Some of these may not even be routed through
| the audio card
|
| * Similarly, many people use USB headsets. They have their
| own audio device. In fact, many computers have multiple -
| in my case, my camera has one, the Oculus has another, so
| does the monitor. All through USB or DisplayPort
|
| * Most sound processing tasks are not really that taxing on
| a modern system. Thief might be an exception and even then,
| given some AMD and NVidia offerings, this is probably
| doable without dedicated audio processing hardware
|
| * Also Creative had a chokehold on the industry as a whole.
| Lots of libraries and products were purchased or killed.
| They still make audio cards today, but I can't understand
| why.
| DiabloD3 wrote:
| > Never heard of this.
|
| SED. Patent bullshit killed it off, Canon decided to end
| the project instead of producing what could have been the
| greatest display technology of all time.
| fsflover wrote:
| I guess this is exactly what Apple thinks when they remove
| root from your devices.
| devmunchies wrote:
| $ sudo whoami
|
| root
| fsflover wrote:
| https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20190716/109793/H
| HRG...
| devmunchies wrote:
| oh, mobile. yeah agreed. thanks for link, haven't seen
| this.
| PAPPPmAc wrote:
| Good old
|
| Right to Read (Stallman, 1997)
| https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
|
| and
|
| The Coming War On General Purpose Computing (Doctorow, 2011)
| https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Coming_War_on_General_Com.
| ..
|
| warning us that entities really are going to try exactly that
| bullshit. And, as usual, sounding paranoid at the time and
| "oh, yeah, of course that happened" later.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| The industry is working on that.
|
| We're still getting people used to the idea of "phones" in
| beautiful and "safe" walled gardens. (We all know that
| "phones" aren't actually personal computers so it's not like
| we're giving anything up!)
|
| It's easier to control infringing uses of technology in the
| walled garden, where the imprimatur of the "gardener" reigns
| supreme and software can be sent down the memory hole if it
| angers the establishment.
|
| If this goes according to plan nobody (at least, nobody who
| isn't part of an aged and miniscule market segment) will
| notice when the personal computers are brought into the
| "safety" of the garden too.
| corobo wrote:
| Now I know about nyaa.si. Cheers MPA.
|
| Could you guys DMCA something reminiscent of tvtorrents.com? Man
| that place was great for finding stuff to watch.
| proverbialbunny wrote:
| You really want to go to private trackers to get quality over
| quantity.
|
| I'd share public sites, but I'm not sure if it breaks the
| rules.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| I thinK TVTorrents was private. I think it got replaced with
| the broadcast the .net website.
| chewzerita wrote:
| I thought GitHub said they were going to assume good faith by the
| _repository_ and allow it to stay up until a ruling has been
| decided (as well as funding legal costs), rather than immediately
| taking it down under the hand of the "rightsholder".
|
| Did I misread their previous statement after the youtube-dl
| fiasco?
| fireattack wrote:
| Nothing will change much, as soon as GitHub is still a user-
| generated content host. They have to follow DMCA safe harbor
| practice, which is to obey the claim until proven false, in
| trade with not get sued themselves as a host.
| [deleted]
| Griffinsauce wrote:
| The relevant part of their "youtube-dl is back" post:
|
| > Given the cost to developers of an unwarranted takedown of
| code, we ensure we have a complete notice before we take
| action. We distinguish between code that merely can be used in
| an infringing way and code that is preconfigured to be used a
| certain way. We also recognize that code can provide access to
| copyrighted content without violating the law (for example,
| fair use). In some cases we can keep a project up because the
| content identified in the takedown notice is not in fact
| infringing or circumventing a TPM that controls access or
| copying of copyrighted works.
|
| So basically: no. But they surrounded it with so much fluff
| that's its easy to misinterpret.
| ihuman wrote:
| I think that was just for section 1201 claims, not all claims.
|
| > "Going forward, we are overhauling our 1201 claim review
| process..."
|
| https://github.blog/2020-11-16-standing-up-for-developers-yo...
| atum47 wrote:
| I've made a cool app that consumes yts api a while ago. Naively I
| even shared it here. After learning that someone in England was
| arrested only for having links to pirated movies I took
| everything down.
|
| It's a shame how hard they are coming after torrents and
| copyright content like that. As I kid growing up in Brazil I
| wouldn't have access to a lot of movies, games and tv shows if
| weren't for torrents and pirate content. Now a days I can buy
| these games and pay for a subscription to movies and tv shows,
| but I learned of them by downloading first.
|
| I wonder how much it hurts a tv show like GOT to have some kid
| watching it without buying.
| jug wrote:
| Wow. 100% Streisand Effect here.
| zeruch wrote:
| As someone who worked in that industry for a long time (for
| BayTSP, which eventually got bought and pulled into Irdeto), the
| MPA/A is one of the more fervent (and obnoxious clients) we had.
| Not as dumb as say, Disney or NBC, but still...dedicated since
| the Valenti days to taking down anything that could event
| tangentially be related to downloading a movie without
| "permission"
|
| It's a stupid industry, populated by even more stupid clients.
| looperhacks wrote:
| For those who don't know nyaa.si: it's probably the most popular
| public tracker for anime/manga/and related stuff. It sprung up
| not so long ago after the original nyaa.eu (? I'm not 100% sure
| on the domain) shut down. Today it's not the only surviving
| clone, but probably the biggest one.
|
| I'm still not sure however, how the repo itself violates
| copyright. Yes I'm aware of the explanations but I have a hard
| time believing it. And I can't exactly look up the linked code
| files.
| cush wrote:
| Ten forkbots and 1000 forks later...
| [deleted]
| jniedrauer wrote:
| This site is mainly used to share Japanese media. The streaming
| services have really dropped the ball in this area. They either
| don't simulcast to other parts of the world (netflix), offer
| terrible subtitles that are worse than fan translations (netflix,
| crunchyroll), or just plain never release content for
| international audiences.
|
| I pay for every relevant streaming service I can, and even when I
| can access legal, official distributions, I _still_ generally
| prefer fan releases. It 's embarrassing.
|
| I'm so tired of the rent seeking in the entertainment industry. I
| want to pay artists and content creators, not an ever growing
| pile of mediocre middlemen and their lawyers. How can we pool our
| money to hire lobbyists and change the landscape of this
| industry?
| Macha wrote:
| Yeah, I subscribe to Crunchyroll, Netflix, Prime Video, and
| Funimation. Or in other words, 100% of services with streaming
| anime available in my country. To be fair, seasonal anime gets
| a good coverage with those. Netflix's player is pretty good,
| but the rest vary from meh to awful (I have never successfully
| changed the timestamp in Funimation's player without playback
| crashing within the next minute).
|
| But back catalogues availability is not so good. Crunchyroll
| and Netflix have the most popular stuff like Naruto, Code Geass
| or Evangelion but literally nobody has, say, The Devil is a
| Part Timer in my country.
|
| Movies? The SAO movie got a physical showing in my country, the
| Made in Abyss movie actually did show up on a pay per view non-
| region locked streaming service and... that's literally it.
|
| Soundtracks? It might be on Spotify. This week. But maybe not
| next week. I've no fucking idea, but the constant appearence
| and disappearence of soundtrack songs from my playlists has
| even caused me to stop moving spotify.
|
| So for movies and back catalogues, my only "legal" option is to
| ship DVDs/Blurays and a region locked player from the US, or
| maybe sometimes I can get stuff from the UK in my own region.
| For soundtracks, even that is not usually an option. Does that
| legally entitle me to pirate it? No. Do I care? Not really, I
| feel I've tried my best
| chaosharmonic wrote:
| > the Made in Abyss movie actually did show up on a pay per
| view non-region locked streaming service and... that's
| literally it.
|
| Made in Abyss? You mean the show that spent its entire
| broadcast run locked behind _two paywalls?_
|
| Re:Creators is another one that went criminally underrated
| thanks to the travesty that was Anime Strike.
| Shank wrote:
| Made in Abyss Movie 3: Dawn of the Deep Soul was released
| on eventive so that you could stream it, as a result of
| COVID-19. Without COVID-19, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't
| have landed on there, since it was primarily a substitution
| for going to actual in-person screenings, which were
| cancelled in April 2020.
| faitswulff wrote:
| Aside, but Made in Abyss was fantastic.
| Throwaway2021v2 wrote:
| I personally think renting content is a joke, let alone renting
| censored content.
|
| For example, why would anyone want to rent a censored version
| of Interspecies Reviewers - which is a show about brothels and
| prostitutes and sex?
|
| And let's not foreget that Western companies like Funimation
| censor Blu-ray releases.
|
| https://boundingintocomics.com/2020/02/02/for-second-time-fu...
| fireattack wrote:
| The coverage of Anime in some countries (such as the US) are a
| lot better than before though.
|
| Can't speak of translation quality as I don't watch English-
| sub, but they have no problem with simulcast. As a matter of
| fact, lots of popular animes released on Nyaa.si nowadays are
| directly ripped from Crunchyroll/Funimation/etc. TVrips from
| Japan, which were the main source before, are actually getting
| rarer and rarer.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| > This site is mainly used to share Japanese media.
|
| In fact, non-CJK media is explicitly prohibited by its terms.
|
| So it's a bit strange to see the MPAA making the takedown and
| mentioning their biggest members (all Hollywood) in the press
| release. I suppose the US subsidiaries or partners of certain
| Japanese media companies might be members of the MPAA?
|
| EDIT: Ah right, one of the companies named is Sony Pictures,
| which owns a US anime distributor (Funimation).
| ihuman wrote:
| Sony also owns Aniplex, which owns A-1 Pictures, CloverWorks,
| and Aniplex of America. Soon Sony Pictures will own
| Crunchyroll, too.
| joshuaissac wrote:
| Not only that, but Sony Corporation, which owns Sony
| Pictures, is itself a Japanese company.
| astrange wrote:
| > offer terrible subtitles that are worse than fan translations
| (netflix, crunchyroll)
|
| This is true sometimes, but usually it's not true because
| nobody does fansubs anymore. Most subtitled torrents are copies
| of the official subtitles.
|
| (Also you can't judge a translation unless you speak Japanese.)
| proverbialbunny wrote:
| >(Also you can't judge a translation unless you speak
| Japanese.)
|
| That may be part of the problem with the industry. The
| average viewer is none the wiser, so the translation industry
| gets to make a subpar product and get away with it. If it
| wasn't for fansubs, they'd have a monopoly. Thankfully, the
| industry has spent the last 10+ years competing with fan subs
| instead of outright trying to nuke them and it shows. Subs
| (and dubs) were far far worse not that long ago.
|
| Ironically or perhaps paradoxically, as professional made
| dubs and subs have increased in quality fansubs have
| decreased in quality. It's almost like fansubs are giving the
| industry a push forward.
| CarVac wrote:
| The current pro translators have learned from the
| fansubbers and often use the same tools; some even are
| former fansubbers.
|
| Thus they've largely kicked fanmade speedsubs out of the
| "market".
|
| The fansub quantity, for sure, has decreased, but not the
| quality. Speedsubs are no longer a concern for fansubbing
| these days.
|
| Meanwhile, the remaining fansubbers are competing by
| maximizing quality, with features such as singable song
| translations and full sign typesetting. But you end up with
| up to weeklong delays between airing and fansub release.
|
| As far as purely translation quality goes, pro translations
| are much better than they used to be, but speaking as an
| amateur translator myself I always think it's good for the
| viewer to have alternative interpretations for more
| difficult-to-translate passages.
| proverbialbunny wrote:
| >The fansub quantity, for sure, has decreased, but not
| the quality. Speedsubs are no longer a concern for
| fansubbing these days.
|
| That's exactly why the quality has gone down, due to
| these speed subs. Back in the day speed subs were not a
| thing. They popped up when legal subs started popping up,
| almost as a way to compete.
|
| I think the first big name speed sub group was
| horriblesubs, and they still exist today. Today fansubs
| are dominated by these groups. They're quality is okay to
| good. Sometimes they're the only option now, so I'd say
| the quality has gone down.
|
| Back in the 4:3 days when anime was vbr and sources were
| interlaced fansub groups would go through frame by frame
| doing pulldown and denoising. It was amazing. They'd have
| high quality karaoke in the opening and ending scenes.
| When's the last time you've seen high quality karaoke on
| fansubs?
|
| No, quality has gone down. They don't even do color
| correction today. Maybe in the last 3 years or so fansub
| quality has gone up a bit, but it's not a lot.. not
| enough for me to notice much.
|
| >speaking as an amateur translator myself I always think
| it's good for the viewer to have alternative
| interpretations for more difficult-to-translate passages.
|
| Yah. You don't often see translation notes any more
| either.
| CarVac wrote:
| I'm talking about speedsubs as something distinct from
| rips of professional simulcasts; I don't consider those
| fansubs at all.
|
| Real fansub groups used to compete to be the first to
| release their translations, so you wouldn't have
| translation checks or as many editing passes.
|
| Nowadays, the simulcasts (and the rips thereof) are
| faster than any speedsub could possibly be, so the
| remaining fansubbers definitely put more effort into
| quality.
|
| > Back in the 4:3 days when anime was vbr and sources
| were interlaced fansub groups would go through frame by
| frame doing pulldown and denoising. It was amazing.
|
| You don't need to do denoising and deinterlacing these
| days, so... I'm not sure why you think things were better
| back then? Nowadays encoders are more concerned about
| banding in particular, so they may specifically add noise
| on a scene-by-scene basis.
|
| > When's the last time you've seen high quality karaoke
| on fansubs?
|
| If you get _actual_ fansubs these days instead of
| simulcast rips, you 'll find they have high quality
| karaoke. I particularly remember the Railgun S karaoke
| which had realistic-looking lightning striking each
| syllable. And more recently, you may find the English
| translations have been worded so that you can sing along
| in time with the original song.
|
| > You don't often see translation notes any more either.
|
| If you're talking about TL notes in the subtitles
| themselves, they really went out of style. Nobody wants
| to be the next "Translator's note: keikaku means plan".
| ihuman wrote:
| I'm not sure if I'd count Horriblesubs as speedsubs. They
| didn't make their own subs, they just ripped the official
| subs (which is why they called them horrible). The group
| shut down a few months ago.
| trasz wrote:
| That's why we need Github alternatives like https://gitee.com/.
| hellohappyworld wrote:
| I don't think a Chinese git provider would be a good
| alternative in a long run.
| trasz wrote:
| What other provider can afford to properly fight (ie ignore)
| DMCA takedowns?
| dmix wrote:
| Great Streisand marku
| coldcode wrote:
| Browsers are open source. I can download illegal content via a
| browser. Clearly they should DMCA all the browsers.
|
| Make as much (non) sense as this.
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(page generated 2021-01-19 23:01 UTC)