[HN Gopher] Senators want to mandate anti-piracy technology acro...
___________________________________________________________________
Senators want to mandate anti-piracy technology across the web
Author : carride
Score : 238 points
Date : 2022-04-21 14:04 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| yeetsfromhellL2 wrote:
| Once again, politicians are trying to fix something that isn't
| broken and are going to make a bigger mess than whatever it is
| they're trying to change.
|
| This whole thing reminds me of Alice in Wonderland.
| hi_im_miles wrote:
| The "broken" thing is (and always has been) the existence of
| low cost, low barrier-to-entry competitors to monopoly power.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Yes. Makes me wonder who is putting money into the pockets of
| the legislators, because they have everything to gain by
| building deeper moats.
| mirceal wrote:
| trying to fix something that ain't broken and more importantly
| they have 0 clue how it works.
| marssaxman wrote:
| From their perspective, it's broken if they don't control it
| and/or major corporations can't extract rent from it.
|
| Systems which work fine for the rest of us without their
| interference _are_ broken as far as they see it.
| mirceal wrote:
| i think they don't have the tools and understanding to
| figure our what works and what does not work in tech.
| clueless. that's the word i'm looking for
| bena wrote:
| The problem is that piracy isn't a technology problem, it's a
| people problem.
|
| "Pirate" technology doesn't exist. Somewhere, somehow, you need
| to show information. At that point, anything you've used to
| convey that information can also make a copy of that information
| or allow access to someone who shouldn't have it.
|
| Piracy is people using legitimate means to perform actions in a
| manner deemed unacceptable.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > anything you've used to convey that information can also make
| a copy of that information
|
| That's true of a general purpose computing device, but sadly
| those are becoming rarer and rarer, at least as a percentage of
| all devices.
|
| (I suppose in some technical sense the device conveying the
| information is necessarily making a copy of the information at
| least temporarily, but there is no need for that copy to be
| persistent or retrievable at the request of the user.)
| [deleted]
| thomascgalvin wrote:
| The Senate is an anachronism that needs to be disbanded.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| The Senate was broken with the 17th amendment. As described
| originally, senators were meant to represent their state
| government and take a longer view than the House. The House was
| meant to represent the people and their whims.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It's disgusting. It should either be neutered like the House of
| Lords, or keep its position but have its members directly
| elected. Top 100 candidates get in.
|
| The citizens of overly influential states with tiny populations
| would easily be placated by the possibility of electing at
| least one or two actual neo-nazis to the Senate; you could
| definitely pass it. We would have to accept that both Kim and
| Kanye would probably be Senators.
| sokoloff wrote:
| There's a process for that. I think it's far more likely that
| on whatever date the US ceases to exist that the Senate is
| still in place.
| kornhole wrote:
| The cost of deploying or not deploying such anti-piracy screening
| systems further entrenches megatech and makes their smaller
| competitors illegal.
| agentultra wrote:
| Senators are also debating whether the US should have a digital
| currency. I don't have faith that they have the technical
| literacy to understand the nuances of that conversation much less
| the effects this would have.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Depending on your definition, the US already has a digital
| currency.
| walterbell wrote:
| Among other "features", CBDCs can enforce kill switches based
| on transaction-level filter criteria, e.g. sender, goods,
| recipient.
| imtringued wrote:
| Online banking does count but it isn't a service provided by
| the US government, it is a service provided by private banks.
| stuckinhell wrote:
| We need to bust monopolies asap.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > Every three years, the public could submit petitions proposing
| new mandates for anti-piracy technology.
|
| Why stop at websites, when OSes and browsers could do the
| filtering for you? And why stop at piracy, when there are all
| sorts of other illegal files (and "legal but harmful" content)
| out there?
|
| (For the avoidance of doubt, I think that these are all terrible
| ideas, and I fear that once the government starts mandating
| blackboxes for one purpose, it will become harder to prevent laws
| mandating blackboxes for other purposes).
| usrn wrote:
| pc86 wrote:
| What is misinformation? Does just being wrong count, or do
| you have to prove malicious intent? How do you prove intent?
| What about things that were correct at one point in time but
| aren't anymore? What about things discussing or analyzing the
| misinformation, that by definition requires showing/spreading
| it?
|
| How about you just let people be free? Some people are
| stupid. You're never going to stop that. But the
| paternalistic "just filter it out" nonsense isn't the panacea
| those in favor of it think it is.
| hallway_monitor wrote:
| It's censorship, plain and simple. And it leads to
| totalitarian control of all information. How is this hard
| for people to understand?
| pc86 wrote:
| Rather than acting like everyone else is an idiot,
| perhaps explain your points rationally. You might even
| convince some fence-sitters or make folks who disagree
| with you less sure of their positions.
|
| But the tone of your comment is very much "it's obvious,
| you dumbasses" which only entrenches those whose minds
| you'd presumably like to change.
| haunter wrote:
| "+70 year old farts debate to keep the status quo"
|
| There are 32 senators over 70, they should be all retired
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Young people aren't really a silver bullet. So many young
| people have no clue how the internet or computers work.
| azinman2 wrote:
| I've seen many of the young people stepping in... they can
| easily be worse. They're typically coming up in a WAY more
| polarized world where identity politics are the only path
| forward... and they are often just as clueless about the world.
| New doesn't mean better.
| mattwad wrote:
| That's easy to fix - young but also with experience. I don't
| know why we don't have some sane speed bumps for people that
| have political aspiration. Don't let judges be appointed if
| the bar deems them "unfit." Don't let politicians run for
| senator if they've never worked for government a day in their
| life, or have criminal records.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| >I've seen many of the young people stepping in... they can
| easily be worse.
|
| Madison Cawthorn is probably the best example of this.
| Elected to Congress at 25 years old. Education: One semester
| at a Bible College where he received "mostly D's" and then
| dropped out. Work experience: One and a half years as a part
| time staff assistant to Mark Meadows. He's now in a position
| of authoring laws that bind all of us while receiving a $174K
| annual salary plus incredible benefits at taxpayer expense.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| "Senate" literally derives from the Latin word for "old man"
| (senex)
| scotuswroteus wrote:
| Senators are mostly bad people
| walterbell wrote:
| https://diff.wikimedia.org/2022/04/20/how-smart-is-the-smart...
|
| _> you can let Congress know that you oppose mandatory
| censorship filters. Fight for the Future is leading a petition
| opposing the harmful impacts of the legislation that will be
| delivered to Congress on 25th April, 2022. You can sign the
| petition at https://nocensorshipfilter.com and make sure Congress
| knows just how many people are concerned about the impacts this
| bill will have on free speech._
|
| The "SMART Copyright Act" would: - Create
| universal automated censorship chokepoints across the internet by
| requiring expensive content filters that we already know don't
| work and regularly silence lawful speech - Encourage
| surveillance backdoors in everything from Canva to Google Drive
| to internet service provider traffic, since it is written to
| apply at all layers of the internet - Mandate
| filtering of all content online at all levels, from Big Tech
| platforms like Twitch and Instagram to ISPs like Verizon and
| Comcast--and for any other platform that lets people speak or
| share online - Force these companies to compromise the
| safety and security of the internet with mandated use of software
| even if it has massive flaws, or risk being sued
|
| https://onezero.medium.com/nonstandard-measures-cf47c67e8f05
|
| _> the labels, publishers and other rightsholder groups backing
| "stay down" filters will all tell you that Content ID routinely
| allows infringing materials through. That's because it is such a
| blunt instrument: The matching heuristics it uses are easy to
| study and evade...if you are an actual pirate. So pirates study
| the system, figure out how to evade it, and post with impunity.
| By definition, then, filters only catch the people who don't
| think they're doing something infringing -- while deliberate
| infringers slip through._
| ______-_-______ wrote:
| I can't wait to wake up one morning and find out my mandatory
| censorship chokepoint is preventing me from viewing the number
| "1"
|
| https://www.androidpolice.com/numbers-violate-google-drives-...
| throwaway14356 wrote:
| how do we know you didnt put something naughty in the file?
| pbuzbee wrote:
| Sadly, the first 3 of those 4 bullet points seem like something
| that Congress would be happy to have. The 4th doesn't seem like
| something that they are concerned about.
| car_analogy wrote:
| Why does this automatic enforcement of law only ever cut one way?
|
| If we're mandating that technology should enforce laws
| automatically, how about anti-monopoly-power technology? All
| mergers and acquisitions of companies above some size are
| automatically blocked, and they have to make a compelling case in
| a court of law to have the block lifted. It has to be renewed
| every three years, or the company is automatically broken up
| again.
|
| Oh, and a simple similarity search versus the entire web, to mark
| patents as invalid due to prior art or obviousness.
|
| DRM could be presumed to infringe upon fair use and other legal
| rights of ownership, and be automatically declared illegal (no, I
| don't mean that breaking it would become legal, though it would.
| I mean the DRM itself would be illegal, and the manufacturer
| would be by law forced to remove it), unless the manufacturer
| convincingly argues it is necessary (and re-argues it every three
| years).
|
| And naturally, use of copyrighted material would be presumed
| fair-use, and just like wrongful takedowns don't get punished
| currently, if some material were proven to be infringing in a
| very non-automatic legal proceeding, the only consequence would
| be taking the material down - no other fines or punishment of any
| kind.
| agilob wrote:
| >how about anti-monopoly-power technology
|
| Somebody please think about the shareholders!
| btrettel wrote:
| > Oh, and a simple similarity search versus the entire web, to
| mark patents as invalid due to prior art or obviousness.
|
| Former USPTO patent examiner here. Patent similarity search
| doesn't work that well at present. Even when there is a perfect
| 102 reference (the best sort of prior art reference; the
| reference shows exactly what is claimed) in the patent
| literature [0], frequently none of the 3 similarity-based
| search engines I'd try [1] would return that reference. There
| are many reasons for this. In my previous area (water heaters
| and ventilation, mostly), a lot of the issue was because the
| software would only look at the text (and citations) and the
| drawings really did provide a lot of critical details that
| aren't easy to express in text. (I already would check the
| provided citations so the AI checking the citations is not a
| value-add in my opinion.)
|
| Patent searching is not anywhere near as easy as many people
| here seem to think! That's particularly true when the examiner
| has a very limited amount of time to search, which is every
| time.
|
| [0] Yes, searching the entire web in addition to patents would
| be better. But it's already clear that the software often
| doesn't return the best references from the patent databases it
| does search, so I'm skeptical that moving to the entire web
| would make that much of a difference.
|
| [1] IP.com (can work on unpublished applications), Dialog
| Foreign Patent Finder (can work on unpublished applications),
| Google Patents (if the application was already published). Each
| of these seem to be roughly as good as each other. For a while
| I'd also try the USPTO's home-grown PLUS system from the early
| 00s, which returned mostly irrelevant documents.
| car_analogy wrote:
| > Patent similarity search doesn't work that well at present.
|
| Neither does automatic detection of fair use - that's the
| point. Just crank up the false-positive rate so anything
| vaguely related counts as prior art. If the submitter is not
| happy about it, they can argue their case in a proper court.
| btrettel wrote:
| The status quo is close to what you describe. Very few
| patent applications are not rejected in the first action. I
| did a quick Google search that indicates that over the
| entire USPTO, 88% of patent applications are rejected by an
| examiner in the first action [0]. I myself _never_ allowed
| an entire application on the first action!
|
| However, it's rare that an attorney will argue that their
| patent should be issued in court. Almost always they argue
| with an examiner.
|
| A lot of people here seem to believe that the USPTO issues
| patents like handing out candy to children, but the reality
| is that a large fraction of patent applications are never
| granted. Mistakes happen, yes, but that has more to do with
| how little time the USPTO gives examiners than anything
| else. It's really easy to miss something. If you want to
| improve patent quality, tell your congressmen to increase
| funding at the USPTO so examiners can get more time.
| Nothing else will work in my view. Right now the USPTO is
| funded solely by fees paid by patent applicants, which
| isn't enough and probably distorts the incentives.
|
| [0] https://thompsonpatentlaw.com/pto-allow-rate/
| [deleted]
| blackoil wrote:
| > All mergers and acquisitions of companies above some size are
| automatically blocked,
|
| While I agree to the spirit of your comment, isn't this already
| true, I have heard of multiple times of deals waiting for
| approval across multiple countries for them to be a closed.
| imtringued wrote:
| There are also more important things than this DRM rage boner.
| Surely, providing the entire country with fast internet has
| priority over DRM?
|
| I just see this as an attempt to increase the amount of
| bureaucracy for no real reason other than to let people
| specialize in navigating the bureaucracy and using that as a
| weapon against other people.
| fsflover wrote:
| > how about anti-monopoly-power technology?
|
| _big tech monopoly power is vital to national security_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31108570
| thrashh wrote:
| Well imagine if you have a few friends who are into cars and
| they're all about, say, reducing certain regulations on
| tailpipes.
|
| You yourself don't know much about cars and frankly don't care,
| but because the people you are around predominantly keep giving
| you these convincing arguments, you start to support their side
| without even thinking about it. When someone random person
| starts arguing a counterpoint, you might even start repeating
| what your friends told you.
|
| Most congressman aren't creating or remixing content. They
| probably don't care that much, but the people lobbying are
| definitely more one-sided.
| imchillyb wrote:
| Why not automatic culling of donations over $100.00 from a
| single entity?
|
| We should do this to combat corruption.
| the_common_man wrote:
| In the us atleast, the end goal is to have Monopolies. So this
| goes against what you want
| mc4ndr3 wrote:
| America+ Subscription by Disney
| roywiggins wrote:
| > All mergers and acquisitions of companies above some size are
| automatically blocked, and they have to make a compelling case
| in a court of law to have the block lifted
|
| Something _like_ this is already a thing, though the review is
| performed by the DoJ and FTC.
|
| https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/statutes/hart-scott...
|
| > This Act, amending the Clayton Act, requires companies to
| file premerger notifications with the Federal Trade Commission
| and the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department for
| certain acquisitions. The Act establishes waiting periods that
| must elapse before such acquisitions may be consummated and
| authorizes the enforcement agencies to stay those periods until
| the companies provide certain additional information about the
| likelihood that the proposed transaction would substantially
| lessen competition in violation of Section 7 of the Clayton
| Act.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hart%E2%80%93Scott%E2%80%93Rod...
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| I'll take the Sherman antitrust law for 300 Alex.
| lazyier wrote:
| > Why does this automatic enforcement of law only ever cut one
| way?
|
| Because the people paying for it only want it to go one way.
|
| > how about anti-monopoly-power technology?
|
| That defeats the purpose of the legislation in the first place.
|
| The goal is to establish monopolies. Why would they introduce a
| provision to undermine everything they are trying to accomplish
| with the law in the first place?
|
| It would be counter productive.
| nimbius wrote:
| actually, id argue its much more grandiose than just
| monopolistic activity. If you want to continue doing
| capitalism, youll need to switch from physical property to
| imaginary property as the laws of thermodynamics simply do
| not permit for endless consumption of scarce physical
| resources.
|
| maximum consumption with minimum production expense has
| already eclipsed its zenith in the seventies. evermore
| impoverished consumers seeing longer hours and lower wages
| were made to establish credit as an extension of their
| purchasing power. this credit was made mandatory at all
| levels of capitalist society, including government.
|
| to permit even the idea of piracy would be to undercut
| capitalisms current waxing pivot to continued survival. its
| less a drive from the MPAA, and more a common understanding
| amongst leaders.
| acomar wrote:
| I agree with you that it's an attempt to side-step the
| tendency of the rate of profit to fall but I'm not sure
| it's particularly well-understood by anyone involved. and
| even a cursory examination of the material basis for so-
| called imaginary property can't help but identify that such
| property only exists insofar as computers continue to make
| them accessible. this transition cannot prevent the death
| of this society to climate change.
| jotm wrote:
| Why would the rulemakers make rules for themselves...
| steve76 wrote:
| Bud wrote:
| It probably only cuts one way because it's difficult or
| impossible to implement "anti-monopoly-power technology", as
| you put it. Indeed, in your own comment you posited the
| existence of such a technology but then failed to suggest one,
| or even how it might theoretically work. You proposed a
| cumbersome, entirely legal-system-based solution instead.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _Why does this automatic enforcement of law only ever cut one
| way? If we 're mandating that technology should enforce laws
| automatically, how about anti-monopoly-power technology?_
|
| The people writing those laws _understand_ that monopolies and
| the regulations surrounding them are complicated. They _don 't_
| understand that technology is, also.
| irrational wrote:
| Corporations want to mandate anti-piracy technology across the
| web and have purchased Senators who are willing to shill for
| them.
| kodah wrote:
| I do not understand why congresspeople are working on _anything_
| but housing right now. Literally zero citizens asked for this.
| bedast wrote:
| As corporations are considered people, there is not, in fact,
| literally zero citizens asking for this. Very rich citizens
| capable of padding pockets of congresspeople are asking for
| this. These same very rich citizens would prefer not to address
| housing.
|
| So yeah, I absolutely understand why congress is tackling this.
| It's more profitable to do so.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| Allowing corporations to continue to be viewed as people is
| the worst thing for the USA. That needs to be challenged
| again and again until it is brought down.
| asdff wrote:
| What they work on is reflective of their real priorities in
| office. It's never you and me, its them and their friends. All
| we are there to do is vote the party line and allow the
| profitable status quo to continue unquestioned.
| zeruch wrote:
| Disclosure: I worked in the "anti-piracy" industry for 6 years at
| one point. It should be renamed the Big Content Fluffing
| Contingent, but that position is itself revealing on my part.
|
| It's all just anti-competitive and bullying trash-baggery from an
| industry stuck in the 1940s for business practices (read: Mafia
| accountancy) with a 1980s business mandate (read: "greed is good"
| when its us, but for anyone else is bad).
|
| They dedicate huge sums to lobby whomever will do their bidding
| (e.g. over history, folks like Sonny Bono, Claire McCaskill, etc)
| and demand total, stupid fealty, because the execs in Big Content
| really are like d-list extras from an episode of Entourage (or
| the Tom Cruise character from Tropic Thunder).
|
| They have no understanding of tech, and don't care, because they
| feel all of reality can be warped to their vision via contractual
| enforcement and litigation threats.
|
| It's a human centipede of stupid.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| > For example, in December 2020, Tillis introduced legislation to
| make it a felony to run a pirate streaming site. Just two weeks
| later, _the proposal was attached to the massive 5,600-page, $900
| billion COVID spending bill. As a result, Tillis ' bill became
| law before most lawmakers--to say nothing of the general public--
| had time to read it._
|
| This kind of doing it, as an intentionally deceptive practice,
| should itself be declared felony (or whatever a felony against
| the whole country and the whole legislative system as a victim is
| called).
| Asooka wrote:
| I believe the term for that is treason.
| asdff wrote:
| That would require the people benefiting from pork barrel
| politics actually voting to eliminate their graft. That has
| never happened in history.
| [deleted]
| rolph wrote:
| there is a meta-problem that leads to this situation:
|
| " It's not clear when--or even if--this legislation will come up
| for a vote. Traditionally, a bill like this would be considered
| by a Senate committee before making its way to the Senate floor.
| But as Congress has become more dysfunctional"
|
| "it has become increasingly common for bills like this to get
| attached at the last minute to gargantuan "must-pass" spending
| bills."
|
| This has to come to an end, no more dealing from the bottom of
| the deck.
| bannedbybros wrote:
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Pardon the ignorance, but why is Ars Technica using a Moldova-
| based proxy for page 2. Is anyone else seeing "netblogpro.com" in
| the URL for page 2.
|
| Instead of
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/04/if-you-like-yout...
|
| I was able to get
|
| https://arstechnica.netblogpro.com/tech-policy/2022/04/if-yo...
|
| Some other examples, Russia-based proxies:
|
| https://buzzfeed.netblogpro.com (buzzfeed.com)
|
| https://politico.trem.media (politico.com)
|
| https://appleinsider.top1tv.net (appleinsider.com)
|
| https://nymag.top1tv.net (nymag.com)
|
| https://bleepingcomputer.top1tv.net (bleepingcomputer.com)
| koprulusector wrote:
| > Pardon the ignorance, but why is Ars Technica using a
| Moldova-based proxy for page 2. Is anyone else seeing
| "netblogpro.com" in the URL for page 2.
|
| Hi. Honestly, I have no idea what you're talking about. What do
| you mean by "Page 2"? The article is a single, continuous page
| in my browser (Firefox mobile for iOS).
| getcrunk wrote:
| I saw the netblog pro thing but it was through Google news. I
| think it's a fake site.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Page 1:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/04/if-you-like-
| yout...
|
| Page 2:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/04/if-you-like-
| yout...
|
| See the URL for page 2 in the HTML of page 1:
| x=$(printf '\r\n'); sed "s/$/$x/" << eof|openssl
| s_client -connect 18.118.201.119:443 -ign_eof|sed -n
| '/Page:/p' GET /tech-policy/2022/04/if-you-like-
| youtubes-copyright-takedown-process-youll-love-this-bill/
| HTTP/1.1 Host: arstechnica.com Connection:
| close eof
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| Netflix on Apr 19: We lost money because too many people are
| sharing accounts. [1]
|
| Senate on Apr 21: We need more anti-piracy laws!
|
| The connection between BigCo and politicians is so obvious, but
| we'll keep putting up with it because we're idiots.
|
| 1. https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/19/23032643/netflix-
| password...
| jonstaab wrote:
| This is one of the worst ideas I've ever heard, from a
| competition standpoint, from a censorship standpoint, from an
| innovation standpoint, just... oof.
| kloch wrote:
| This would be a disaster for startups and hobby sites hosting
| user-submitted content without a significant minimum size or
| revenue threshold.
|
| It would definitely be the end for one of the sites I run (which
| received only one DMCA request in 22 years of operation).
| pmontra wrote:
| Incumbents will love it and will look at the cost of the
| mandated software as an insurance fee against future
| competitors.
|
| Any other user submitted web site will die or never be. Sorry
| about that.
|
| BTW, are mobile apps not backed by a web site in the scope of
| that legislation?
| sonicggg wrote:
| > "For example, in December 2020, Tillis introduced legislation
| to make it a felony to run a pirate streaming site. Just two
| weeks later, the proposal was attached to the massive 5,600-page,
| $900 billion COVID spending bill. As a result, Tillis' bill
| became law before most lawmakers--to say nothing of the general
| public--had time to read it."
|
| Is it just me, or democracies have been flirting quite often with
| authoritarianism? Canada, for example, has been taking some
| worrisome measures recently. Now US is following suit, although
| in a much smaller scale.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Democracy- straight democracy- is a terrible way to avoid
| authoritarianism. So long as a majority agrees, anything goes.
|
| Un-democratic checks are required in any such system to prevent
| a tyranny of the majority. Unelected judges, co-equal to but
| with different powers than a legislative or executive body, are
| one such example.
|
| There's not a perfect system yet, because at the end of the
| day, it's always just a bunch of imperfect people in a shared
| imaginary game. I'm not holding my breath for technology to
| save us either, because I don't imagine any AI will do a better
| job- it'll have to be trained on human interpretations of that
| imaginary playground, after all.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| How much bribes were paid to these two senators to push this
| bill?
| [deleted]
| bigbacaloa wrote:
| Pirate sites like library genesis and schihub are the best thing
| that happened to academic publishing since the death of
| libraries.
| aqfamnzc wrote:
| Was the alleged death of libraries a good thing for academic
| publishing?
| pessimizer wrote:
| Yes, it was terrible when access to information was facilitated
| by professionals who had a professional belief in providing
| access to everything for free, and in protecting the identities
| of people who used them. Better now when what you read can be
| tracked in realtime. Or changed while you read it. Or deleted,
| along with all references to it.
|
| edit: the biggest inroads against the academic publishing
| cartel have been when institutions and their libraries refused
| to pay.
| nynx wrote:
| Academia is not blameless in restricting access to research.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| While technically true, doesn't change that the death of
| libraries is absolutely not a win for free access to
| information
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| oh lovely, more regulatory capture and lobbying avenues for
| elected gangsters
|
| f*ck right off
| michaelmrose wrote:
| As I type this my other monitor is displaying pirated content in
| glorious 4K resolution downloaded via sites that have been in
| blatant contravention of the existing laws for 19 years.
| Simultaneously I pay for a subscription entitles me to watch the
| same content in the same resolution on a TV I don't own and don't
| have room to install if I wanted one.
|
| My other choices include watching it in glorious 720p that
| somehow manages to look worse than SD from 1995 or paying $150 to
| buy optical disks of a series I'd like to watch once to see it in
| 1080p and buy an optical disk drive for the privilege.
|
| While not everyone's quality is quite as bad as Amazon they all
| work worse on computers than TVs and in addition to dealing with
| mediocre hardware and limiting platforms one is now expected to
| deal subscribe to 7 platforms to have access to most content.
|
| Meanwhile jellyfin is basically netflix for content on your own
| hard drive or network which is trivial to acquire from sites that
| have been distributing torrent and magnet links for 19 years. If
| its worthwhile to pirate even while actually paying for the same
| content and such pirated content is readily available from
| lawbreakers you can't shut down despite obviously breaking
| existing laws maybe making random websites implement expensive
| screening isn't a useful thing.
|
| Now bob's forum has to buy tens of thousands of dollars of tech
| to keep people from theoretically sharing links to <insert
| series> while every Tom Dick and Harry are torrenting from the
| usual suspects.
|
| To end most piracy make it like radio where services pay for a
| standard license for content and every streaming service has
| every piece of content while competing on interface. Then I can
| subscribe to a service that works well on Firefox on Linux and
| you can use a service that only works on your shitty ad laden tv
| if you please.
| e2le wrote:
| In a way, this has already happened. Microsoft has chosen to
| classify qBittorrent, Transmission, and Deluge as PUA
| (potentially unsafe application). As a consequence, Defender will
| block their installation and remove existing copies.
|
| https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/issues/14489
|
| https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/wdsi/threats/malware-encyclo...
|
| https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/wdsi/threats/malware-encyclo...
|
| https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/wdsi/threats/malware-encyclo...
| mike_hearn wrote:
| Well, no, not really. The GitHub thread is based on a mis-
| understanding of what Windows is doing and how Windows AV
| works. Windows uses a system very similar to those used for
| spam filters, except for binaries. That system is "reputation".
| It tries to learn over time to classify software into wanted
| and malware.
|
| Just like with email, to build binary reputation you need to
| cooperate by using cryptography. With email you sign your mail
| using DKIM and publish your DKIM keys in DNS. This lets spam
| filters associate the mails you send together and learn that a
| stream of mails, even though they may all be very different,
| are in fact all "good". With Windows programs you have to sign
| your software. This lets Windows know that different versions
| of your program are actually all "good".
|
| Authenticode certificates cost money. QBitTorrent is open
| source. Unsurprisingly they'd rather not pay for a code signing
| certificate, so their installers are unsigned. From Windows'
| perspective every new version resets the clock and is "unknown"
| because the binaries have different hashes. It then has to
| start learning reputation all over again. New binaries are
| described as "potentially unwanted" rather than explicitly as
| malware because malware is polymorphic, exactly to evade
| blacklisting, so binaries that haven't accumulated any
| reputation yet might or might not be malicious. Windows just
| doesn't know yet. That's why some users report it happens and
| others don't.
|
| This isn't QBitTorrent's fault exactly but they're experiencing
| the same problem you'd get if you tried to run a popular
| mailing list off a site that didn't use SPF or DKIM. You aren't
| signing, so, you get lumped in with all the other people who
| don't sign and many of them are malicious.
|
| tl;dr It's got nothing to do with being a BitTorrent client.
| e2le wrote:
| > tl;dr It's got nothing to do with being a BitTorrent
| client.
|
| That's simply not true. It's got everything to do with it
| being a BitTorrent client.
|
| > Microsoft uses specific categories and the category
| definitions to classify software as a PUA.
|
| > Torrent software (Enterprise only): Software that is used
| to create or download torrents or other files specifically
| used with peer-to-peer file-sharing technologies.
|
| https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
| us/microsoft-365/security/inte...
|
| Microsoft explicitly include "Torrent software" in their
| article for what's considered by them to be PUA.
|
| > In a background article on what's considered unwanted
| software, torrent clients are specifically mentioned, along
| with advertising software and cryptominers. The article
| suggests that it applies to "enterprise" only, but the
| complaints we have seen apply to other Windows versions as
| well.
|
| https://torrentfreak.com/utorrent-continues-to-be-flagged-
| as...
|
| As pointed out by TorrentFreak, the Microsoft article
| suggests that it only applies to the "enterprise" version of
| Windows however as we've seen this doesn't appear to be true.
| It at least explains why some experience this user hostile
| behaviour while others don't.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| If your Windows isn't joined to an AD domain then the
| enterprise stuff doesn't apply. Maybe some of the users
| complaining about QBitTorrent are trying to install it at
| work, but it's much more likely to be simply because they
| don't sign their software. It's more or less guaranteed
| that not doing that will cause spurious and inconsistent
| security warnings.
|
| If you check the github thread then the very first post
| says it was flagged as PUA but the actual error they show
| is clearly a malware classification. The fact that they
| have one naming scheme and QBitTorrent got dumped in the
| PUA section (because it's not malware) doesn't mean it
| automatically gets opted out of the reputation system. And
| they observe themselves that people are re-bundling
| qbittorrent binaries into third party re-packagings that
| are probably adware or malware, which in the absence of
| signing will confuse Windows because it can't tell the re-
| packaged versions apart from the upstream versions.
| e2le wrote:
| > If you check the github thread then the very first post
| says it was flagged as PUA but the actual error they show
| is clearly a malware classification.
|
| Are you sure that's what you're seeing? The image in the
| first post of that GitHub thread shows that Defender did
| indeed flag the qBittorrent installer as PUA.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| I think it looks like that because each program gets a
| single name to identify it in the Defender namespace, and
| that namespace seems to include a sort of general
| categorization. But then a program can be classified in
| multiple ways and blocked for multiple reasons. The
| people on that thread don't seem to be on corporate
| networks, so it seems like Defender is marking it as a
| "threat" for other reasons.
|
| The whole thing is annoyingly confusing and opaque, but,
| I don't think the issue here is some sort of conspiracy
| against BitTorrent. Unsigned software is gonna trigger AV
| false positives, it's been that way for decades. Now
| they're getting AV false positives. If they started
| signing their code then eventually Windows would learn
| it's not malware. Corp networks might still opt to block
| it because they don't want their employees torrenting,
| but that's a separate issue.
| godelski wrote:
| Doesn't Microsoft use torrents to update their software? I
| thought they enabled P2P downloading to reduce their server
| overhead in windows 10. That's a bit hypocritical if you ask
| me.
| jaywalk wrote:
| No, they don't use torrents. The technology is called BITS
| (Background Intelligent Transfer Service):
| https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/bits/about-
| bi...
| iggldiggl wrote:
| Actually BITS is the old thing by now (it's been present in
| Windows since Windows XP), which only tries to download
| things in the background by using spare network bandwidth.
| I've never actively tested how well this "spare bandwidth
| detection" actually works, but on the other hand I've also
| never negatively noticed it, so I guess it might actually
| be doing its job quite well.
|
| On the other hand there is in fact a newer (relatively
| speaking, given that it's a few years old by now, too)
| thingy specifically for Windows Update which also tries to
| use P2P distribution - that one is called DOS. Officially
| that stands for "Delivery Optimization Service", though
| personally I rather prefer "Denial of Service service",
| because when I first encountered I immediately noticed it
| in a negative way:
|
| Even without any P2P features enabled, it spammed literally
| dozens of TCP connections to download stuff, and would
| thereby effectively monopolise the whole bandwidth of my
| internet connection. Until I figured out what was happening
| and disabled it (you can disable it and switch back to
| using BITS for downloading updates), every time my new (at
| the time) laptop was downloading updates, it would
| dramatically slow down Internet speeds for everything else
| in my whole home. Maybe by now that kind of issues have
| been fixed, but I've never tried it myself because BITS is,
| as I said, working perfectly fine and unobtrusively.
| jonathanlydall wrote:
| I have a few Windows machines at home and BITS is so good
| that I've never really noticed it in action.
|
| By comparison, macOS App Store downloads and updates can
| hog bandwidth horribly. It was just my wife and I on our
| at the time 25mb/s line, and Netflix dropped to like 240p
| and was still struggling while I was doing an XCode
| update.
| godelski wrote:
| I'm sorry, not a network guy. But I was thinking of
| this[0], which says you can update your network through
| peers. And maybe it isn't bittorrent, but it looks P2P and
| I'm not sure that's meaningfully different.
|
| [0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
| us/windows/deployment/do/waas-...
| searchableguy wrote:
| I built an API to flag pirated content last year.
|
| I shared the progress on HN:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26748724
|
| Maybe I can find customers if this passes. :P
| e2le wrote:
| Make it a Windows kernel driver for scanning process memory
| and I'm sure you'll have enterprise customers lining up to
| buy it. With or without this new legislation. A new tool for
| spying on their users (students, employees, etc) wont go
| ignored.
| vkou wrote:
| An employee of a company is not a user of the company, they
| are an employee.
| Asooka wrote:
| That doesn't remove their right to basic human decency.
| Like not being spied on.
| vkou wrote:
| As an employee, you trade time and some basic human
| decency in exchange for money.
|
| How much decency you trade is debatable, but I assure
| you, there are millions of people working in industries
| where losing far more decency is considered normal. Call
| centers, retail, food all immediately spring to mind.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| Point of clarification, "PUA" actually stands for "Potentially
| _Unwanted_ Application " (not "unsafe"), which makes this an
| even more transparently bad faith classification.
|
| https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/security/defe...
| namlem wrote:
| Huh, I haven't experienced any problems with qBittorrent in
| Windows.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| Same. I'm on Windows 10 21H2 and install qBittorrent updates
| regularly too, so far no issues.
| Macha wrote:
| Yeah, I dual boot and on Windows I have Deluge, hasn't had
| any issues.
| IceWreck wrote:
| Stop using Windows then. Linux is the way.
| toastal wrote:
| Having used a torrent client to download a Linux ISO from
| Windows, I agree
| e40 wrote:
| It's trivial to setup Docker on Windows to run a torrent
| client.
| ComradePhil wrote:
| Or ignore the PUA warning and install it anyway?
| fsflover wrote:
| It's trivial to run Linux and not needing any workarounds
| for simple actions.
| throw10920 wrote:
| As someone who has used both Linux and Windows
| extensively (and dealt with hardware and software
| problems in both), as well as guided at least a dozen
| different Windows users through some setup and use of
| Linux - this is completely, categorically false.
|
| The closest truth is "some users find it easy to install
| and/or use Linux some of the time" but saying that it is
| "trivial" to run Linux in general is _incorrect_.
| skazazes wrote:
| As someone who uses Linux daily, when will this stop
| being parroted. Your average person, your average
| BitTorrent user even, does not have the skill set
| required for the running of Linux to be anything near
| trivial...
| netr0ute wrote:
| What site are we on again?
| fsflover wrote:
| Strongly depends on the hardware. Also, simply buy
| preinstalled Linux like I did.
| elpatoisthebest wrote:
| This is a small anecdote.
|
| I replaced our family old iMac's OS with popOS about 18
| months ago and my wife hasn't noticed yet.
|
| I'd rate her skill set as "has never and will never know
| that a keyboard can be used for copy/paste shortcuts"
|
| So I actually think there's a tail on either end of the
| tech savvy curve where users are happy with linux...
| [deleted]
| rpmisms wrote:
| If all distros were Gentoo or Arch, you'd be correct, but
| Linux Mint exists, and my very non-technical grandmother
| has no issues using Mint for her day-to-day. Linux is no
| longer gatekept by the command line.
| mjevans wrote:
| I would still recommend Debian, possibly with some added
| repos for things that need to be newer or which aren't
| normally included.
|
| If only that recently discussed change to include just
| the closed source firmware blobs in the standard dist
| gets approved, things would be even better than they
| currently are.
|
| https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Debia
| n-C...
| michaelmrose wrote:
| This parody brought to you by the people for common
| sense.
|
| I have a system76 machine that I've used for years
| without any difficulty until my kids school said she
| needed access to this weird OS called Microsoft Windows
| that I don't know much about so I got a second drive and
| resolved to try this Windows thing on a secondary drive.
|
| Installing the physical drive was the easy part.
| Everything after that went south. First instead of just
| going to windows.com or something I got shunted to stores
| where they were selling entire computers. I didn't NEED a
| new computer just an OS. Then I found people selling
| things called cd keys. What are those? Who even buys an
| OS anymore?
|
| Eventually I figured out you can download something
| called an ISO file (what is that?) from microsoft and pay
| for it later? It looks like I'll be paying hundreds of
| dollars for what comes standard with Linux isn't that
| crazy? Then I tried to "burn" the iso to a usb drive and
| THAT didn't work so I borrowed a portable usb optical
| disk and bought some writable disks at Walmart like it
| was 1999 and finally got it installed whereupon it took a
| giant shit on my computers ability to boot anything
| except Windows. At first I thought it destroyed all my
| data on Linux and I about had a heart attack but after
| hours of troubleshooting I realized I just had to restore
| the ability to choose my OS at boot time and all my data
| was still there and I calmed down a bit.
|
| Then I booted up this "Windows". At first nothing worked
| including the internet so I had to do research on my
| phone. I discovered that unlike Linux windows doesn't
| actually come with the drivers needed for your machine
| you have to go to each manufacturers website and navigate
| their confusing site (and avoid malware sites offering
| drivers) and find each individual driver. If you ever
| need an update you will have to do this all over again
| unless the driver includes an auto update feature. For
| the stuff that does auto update if it ever causes a
| problem with your hardware it will probably be impossible
| to fix and you will just end up reinstalling windows all
| over again and hopefully realizing what tanked your
| install in the first place and people actually do this
| over and over again!
|
| It had a mediocre but acceptable set of default
| applications. Not nearly as good as my computer came with
| but its ok. Then I went to install some software I'm used
| to and I discovered the windows app store unlike Linux
| has almost nothing of value and one is expected to do the
| same dance as above for applications just like drivers.
| While downloading from a seemingly legit site I acquired
| several weird pieces of adware and an actual computer
| virus. Something I had previously just read about on the
| internet. Good thing this insecure OS didn't have any of
| my actual data!
|
| It's not surprising that few people use this "windows"
| thing. It's a total mess and not nearly ready for prime
| time. Maybe 2030 will be the year of the Windows Desktop.
| ComradePhil wrote:
| One thing that has changed is the fact that most of the
| third party drivers is installed automatically when you
| install Windows and can also be updated as "optional
| updates" using Windows update itself... also with WSL,
| you can run a Linux instance which seamlessly integrates
| with Windows.
|
| So, I think the time of the Windows desktop is already
| here.
| fartcannon wrote:
| At what point do you ask yourself if perhaps your opinion
| of the average user is out of date?
| unlaxedneurotic wrote:
| Probably when my <50yo dad stops asking me to change the
| font size on his phone everytime he changes it. The thing
| is, technology is just a tool for most people and except
| software engineers almost no one wants to spend any time
| dealing with anything that they would have to configure.
| Until the day linux based OSes come pre-installed with
| sane defaults that work out of box on laptops, the
| average person won't use it.
| fsflover wrote:
| > Until the day linux based OSes come pre-installed with
| sane defaults that work out of box on laptops
|
| Here you go: https://puri.sm/products/librem-14.
| [deleted]
| skazazes wrote:
| Probably around the time a Microsoft product does not
| appear in the top 100 torrents by seeds across all of the
| major public trackers
| ipnon wrote:
| Is there any other law that requires installing specific
| software, especially mandated by the government?
| RajT88 wrote:
| > "this proposal would also put an agency with no engineering or
| other relevant expertise in charge of how digital products are
| designed."
|
| That's how they roll. See: Ted Stevens
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes
|
| > The metaphor has been widely ridiculed, particularly because
| Stevens displayed an extremely limited understanding of the
| Internet, even though he was in charge of the Senate committee
| with the responsibility for regulating it.
| kodah wrote:
| Not to blow the "our government is broken" trumpet too hard,
| but this is exactly the way the FCC works as well. They instead
| bring on consultants; the FTEs are lawyers and policy makers.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Ted Stevens had a more accurate view of how the internet works
| than 95% of the people I talk to. What's the correction? It's
| not a "series of tubes" it's acshully a "series of pipes"? It's
| a bunch of mailboxes and parcels being delivered to them?
|
| The attacks on Stephens for this were entirely political and
| unfair. He certainly was awful, but the ante-twitter mob that
| converged on him led by late night comedians were computer
| illiterates parroting what they heard.
|
| The reason he said it that way is because he was an old corrupt
| coot who had net neutrality explained to him in very simple
| terms by lobbyists and PR flacks trying (successfully) to stop
| it. The reason he was taunted over it was because of a strategy
| come up with by the opposing PR flacks, probably gathered
| around the same brand of whiteboard.
| euroderf wrote:
| Aren't TCP and IP a series of tubes ? Asking for a friend.
| kodah wrote:
| IP would be the first step in the OSI model where things go
| from physical to logical.
| the8472 wrote:
| Physical pipes can't do multicast (one atom in, one atom
| out). Data networks can, at least in principle.
| pmontra wrote:
| Wires and electric field?
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| >> What's the correction?
|
| OK, I'll bite: tubes/pipes/flow is a bad analogy for packet-
| based network transmission.
|
| Overall though, it doesn't make sense to argue the required
| corrections of this statement unless you also think a good
| analogy for a simple circuit is "wires are straws through
| which electricity pours".
| RajT88 wrote:
| There isn't really a good replacement metaphor. As far as I
| can think of, there's just bad metaphors.
|
| But an important part of demonstrating you're worthy of
| legislating the internet is talking the talk -
| demonstrating you know how what the industry _is_ and _how_
| the industry operates. A suitable replacement statement
| which demonstrates a command of the basic ideas would be:
|
| "If we exceed the capacity of our internet backbones,
| critical services -- as well as consumer services -- will
| be impacted."
|
| For me, "tubes" was less of a gaffe than referring to an
| email as an "Internet". The former was a bad metaphor, the
| latter was a failure of basic layman terminology. It means
| either you don't know what you're talking about, or you're
| a bad communicator, and either of those should be
| disqualifying of your post as the head of a senate
| committee on internet legislation.
| duskwuff wrote:
| It wasn't just the "series of tubes" phrase itself; it was
| the whole nonsensical story that followed that. Wikipedia has
| the full quote and a recording, but to summarize: Stevens
| opposed network neutrality on the grounds that it could lead
| to network congestion, which he illustrated with an example
| of an email (in his words, "an Internet") sent to him which
| took some time to arrive. As an argument, it was barely
| coherent, and demonstrated a lack of understanding of the
| technology he was trying to make an argument about.
| ulkesh wrote:
| Because "series of tubes" and "series of pipes" are both a
| dumbed-down inaccuracy.
|
| The Internet is a mesh of millions of computers that happen
| to be connected by wire or fiber optics or some other
| transmission medium. Fiber optic cables are the closest to
| "tubes" one could analogize, since it has a thing (light)
| being pushed through a cylindrical device, but it does a
| complete disservice to the technological advancements to dumb
| the whole of the Internet down to "series of tubes".
|
| The attacks on Stephens were very justified in that as a
| leader of the committee, he should have been much more well-
| versed in the actual technologies used. He should have wanted
| to be more well-versed. And if lobbyists had that much pull
| and sway over him and what he "knows" and how he presents it,
| then the ridicule was even more justified.
|
| You can try to sugar coat his ineptitude all you like with a
| plethora of excuses, but, in my opinion, he got what he
| deserved with the ridicule.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > The attacks on Stephens for this were entirely political
| and unfair. ... [He] had net neutrality explained to him in
| very simple terms by lobbyists
|
| Were the "attacks" really unfair? He wasn't doing his job
| properly if he was just accepting the position of one group
| of lobbyists without understanding the technology he was
| regulating or the consequences of that legislation.
|
| Also, I'm not sure what you mean by "entirely political",
| since surely criticism of politicians _should be_ political
| (as opposed to personal), but assuming you mean "entirely
| partisan" (i.e. based solely on his party, rather than the
| policy itself) I disagree. Perhaps you can find some example
| of a Democrat using an embarrassingly bad analogy to explain
| something technical, but I suspect it would be met with
| ridicule too, especially if the analogy were being put
| forward to justify a bad policy.
| RajT88 wrote:
| > He certainly was awful
|
| Indeed, it wasn't really entirely political and unfair.
| xioren00 wrote:
| Yeah it's a depressing reality that a lot of government is
| uninformed people making uninformed decisions that affect the
| entire country.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Let's just cut the bullshit and use sortition for governance.
| imtringued wrote:
| It works pretty well in practice, so well, that citizens
| assemblies are often better informed than the politicians
| in government. Yet politicians routinely ignore their non-
| binding decisions/conclusions, as if there is a group of
| people that deserves more attention.
| staircasebug wrote:
| Likely, one would need to follow the "donations" to see who's
| really in charge.
| azinman2 wrote:
| I encourage folks from the HN community to run! We have no (?)
| technologists in the senate and probably not the house either?
| Yet plenty from medicine and other professions...
| usrn wrote:
| Ferrotin wrote:
| The house has Thomas Massie, Darrell Issa, and Bill Foster,
| at least.
| xxpor wrote:
| Issa lost in 2018, IIRC.
| Ferrotin wrote:
| He ran and won in another district in 2020.
| the_common_man wrote:
| Does the job pay high six figures? If not, will pass
| azinman2 wrote:
| Pretty ironic comment from a username that is
| the_common_man
| the_common_man wrote:
| That thinking is pretty common here :-)
| graywh wrote:
| the official salary is $174k, but everyone knows the real
| money is in the kickbacks from your position of power
| aksss wrote:
| They all come out millionaires if they survive a few terms.
| ______-_-______ wrote:
| The problem with positions of power is that the most
| qualified are least likely to want the job.
| throwaway14356 wrote:
| That indeed is the ultimate puzzle. Maybe the solution is
| to pay what they cost and gigify the jobs.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Largely because we've lost social cohesion and pride, so
| that few are motivated towards civic good. The solution is
| purely cultural and doesn't cost any money. But it requires
| shifting belief structures, which requires leadership and
| shared experiences... and that's hard and rare to achieve.
| asdff wrote:
| Not really, its because you will be outspent and stomped
| in an election by the establishment that profits from the
| status quo. Being good at winning elections and being a
| good politician do not always go hand in hand.
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