To me it was the day they removed the discussion filter functionality from their search engine. It was a purely advertising driven move: from now on people searching for a keyword couldn't anymore filter for other people talking about that thing but rather they would be inundated by shops selling that thing or shills promoting it.
That plot however was probably much older, since the obvious wonderful alternative, Dejanews, wasn't available anymore for having been already bought by Google many years before.
I've found that a lot of people are adding "reddit" to their searches as a poor-man's discussion filter. It sort of works but it's also sad in how it's another reflection of how centralized and concentrated the web has become.
That's certainly what I'm doing, and I'm hoping that there will be some alternative by the time reddit becomes useless (it seems to be moving in that direction, although not too quickly for the smaller niche subreddits).
Turns out buying Sealand in order to continue to run ThePirateBay was over-engineering, as ThePirateBay is still alive and running today, albeit in a slightly different form than before.
For now? It seems like a lot of torrent info sites have been closed down (just from reading https://torrentfreak.com/, maybe more pop up than get taken down?).
Don't know. Swedish police (et al) have been trying forever to shut it down, and while they have momentarily succeeded, it always seems to come back up.
I'm no longer familiar with the architecture of TPB, but they seem to be running things in a much more decentralized fashion nowadays, where bunch of independent sites (at least independent domains) are running a frontend with the same database content. Unsure how that works behind the scenes.
But rest assure, you can always find a domain which is not blocked and that is mirroring the content of the proper TPB. In my case, thepiratebay.org is blocked by my ISP, but thepiratebay.party is just a few hours behind (confirmed via VPN)
Compare the following pages for example (if thepiratebay.org works for you)
>...buy Sealand in order to host trackers out of the reach of authorities?
Sealand is within the territorial waters of the UK. No sovereign nation has recognized Sealand's independence from the UK. Even if one did, according to international law, artificial islands and structures don't possess the status of islands.
I remember there was an international ruling where the US was in a trade violation, and I thought the country was permitted to waive IP enforcement until they were compensated.
Not sure about Trinidad and Tobago. Antigua was the one given the right to violate US copyrights to pressure the US to abandon it's illegal gambling restrictions. It was given that right by the WTO.
Considering that it's a DRM module, it's not a surprise. I believe anyone with a DRM module that does not protect it is at risk of losing their license with the content owners. That basically why DRM exists to begin with.
Blaming the content service is easy since they're user-facing, but it's shallow. Content-related restrictions are, in my experience, almost always dictated by the content owner. Region locks, availability windows, use of DRM, DMCAs for anti-DRM, etc, are all at the requirement of the content owners.
I don't think these modern Internet-based service providers care about that stuff much, they have little incentive to. It's driven by contracts.
Incidentally, this is always the reason behind region locks. Service X or content Y isn't available in your country? Don't blame the streaming service, blame the content owner.
Switzerland won't stay neutral and definitely isn't some untouchable fantasy land; it has to be stored outside the boundaries of individual countries, ergo, decentralized solutions like some other commenters mentioned. Git is great for that. I wonder if, in addition to IFPS and the like that were mentioned, if there is a tracker or index of git remotes out there - just a big list of servers hosting git, ranging from the big ones like github to someone's raspberry pi hooked up to the internet to idk, usb sticks in a geocache.
Drew seems like the type to fight illegitimate DMCA's.
Edit: I'm curious, why the downvotes? I am legitimately trying to be helpful. I recognize if you have personal differences with ddevault, but he puts his code where his mouth is.
If I'm misunderstanding said downvotes, please enlighten me.
Edit 2: Many thanks to those who have responded. It appears I misunderstood about this specific instance, where the DMCA does have some legitimacy.
Didn't downvote, but I think you overestimate anyone if you think they'll go to court for you against an org as big as the RIAA or Google (unless perhaps if it's the EFF).
My (flawed?) understanding of DMCA is that the project whom a DMCA is filed against can counter-file if they believe the DMCA is illegitimate, after which the burden of going to court is between the group that filed the DMCA and the group they targeted.
The problem with both RIAA and Google takedown demands is never about the DMCA takedown in relation to copyright infringement, its the circumvention (it seems that EFF understand this very well, but most online commentors didn't get this, which was exarcabated by GitHub using the DMCA takedown repo). Now, no one knows if GitHub were also directly targeted by legal threats as an acessory to "enable" the distribution of circumvention tools, which RIAA and Google is arguing.
Also, what RIAA is trying to remove is the code that allows to get the music video files from YouTube, which is served differently to normal videos (not just the test units in question). This was conspicuously absent from all discussions I've read.
This is absolutely a legitimate DMCA notice. The repos in question are created with the sole intention of bypassing a DRM scheme, which allows for takedown under DMCA 1201.
> It is our belief that the repo as a whole represents a circumvention tool in violation of 1201 and therefore needs to be removed.
> Additionally, the Git repo contains several files that violate Google’s copyrights:
> <a bunch of files>
> In addition to this request, we have filed a separate Sensitive Data takedown request of this file: /widevine-l3-decryptor as it contains the secret Widevine RSA private key, which was extracted from the Widevine CDM and can be used in other circumvention technologies.
> > It is our belief that the repo as a whole represents a circumvention tool in violation of 1201 and therefore needs to be removed.
That bit is probably irrelevant to the DMCA takedown procedure, which only applies to "material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity". I don't think there's much clear precedent to what "be the subject of infringing activity" means, but decryption tools that don't use stolen code definitely don't qualify as "material that is claimed to be infringing".
And if Google does want to claim that the circumvention tool is infringing a Google copyright rather than merely running afoul of an unrelated provision of the DMCA, then Google has to specifically identify their own work of decryption code that the circumvention tool is ripping off. All this notice specifically identifies in the way of actual infringement are two documentation PDFs and an API header file (and we all know where Google stands on API copyright).
Or a polite request to github, apparently, which seems to work too.
I don't feel as bad about it here as about youtube-dl. I disagree, mind you -- I'd like github to act as a neutral service provider -- but this one is a place where I can see why githu might hold a different opinion. It's an ideological split like abortion, gun control, or similar, where reasonable people can violently disagree.
The whole "Sensitive Data takedown request" is also a github thing, but this one is a written policy:
Almost every western country has ratified the 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty, which requires laws broadly similar to the DMCA. The DMCA is just the US's implementation of the WIPO treaty.
Of course. That being said, wasn't there a big discussion when this happened to youtube-dl about how that was almost certainly not a legitimate DMCA? That being the case, disregarding it would not be illegal, at least to my (quite limited) understanding.
It appears I misunderstood in this specific case as there is a much stronger case for this DMCA to be considered legitimate.
The EFF has been supported heavily by Google in the past. Some of the lawyers at Google worked at the EFF and vice versa. Moreover, they often have private fundraising parties for Google staffers. I doubt they're going to bite the hand that feeds them.
Possibly because if anything is, this is a legitimate claim. Ignoring the "it's a tool to circumvent DRM" nonsense (which is a "legitimate" claim under the DMCA).
The repository itself is pirated code - it is code held under copyright by google, and google doesn't want it to be public, therefore anyone distributing it is violating copyright. The DMCA claim is substantially less than what they could do. Actual copyright violations have very large fines.
This is maybe one of the few use cases where a cryptocurrency can help; in a similar vein to the effectiveness of BitTorrent.
Specifically, Filecoin (built by the IPFS folks) could be used as a datastore for git. You can send DMCAs to pseudonymous Filecoin operators all you want; but the content will still be up if one operator keeps hosting it.
Hopefully it will also encourage all commits and repositories to be PGP signed (and not through a centralized FVEY platform), strengthening security, authenticity, and trust.
Space-based crypto-funded storage for guaranteeing that one operator.
The best part about non-GEO satellites is that, although you can't see them 24/7 from one location, that also makes it incredibly difficult to jam their uplinks continuously.
It was going to happen. When Google was making money off of piracy by just running a search engine, it was happy to encourage it and celebrate the philosophy. Now that they're cashing big checks from advertisers and content companies, well, they're just following the money.
I think the time has come for there to be a repository hosting service that is based somewhere in Switzerland :)