Yes, I told someone to inform themselves before making assumptions. Which, I think, is a reasonable expectation.

The rest of the comment was pointing out how archive.org acts like any other public library and therefore should not be treated differently. This does not carry hostility against the person I am replying to.

Please inform yourself. In these comments and on their website, it is covered that they do not provide books freely. Just like any other library books can be borrowed exactly as many times as they own a copy.

Just like any other library they sometimes provide a download for Adobe Digital Edition, which manages your lends on books. But as your friend with DRM stripping tools for sure can confirm: DRM is just an annoyance for legitimate customers, it forces legitimate users to use specific applications, while pirates get the freedom to choose how they interact with the not any more protected media. But this is a discussion for another thread as archive.org treats copyrighted books just like any other library.

Please go to archive.org > Books > Books to Borrow

Select any book which strikes your fancy. You will see a reading excerpt, like flicking through pages in a library. if you have a free account, you can lend it for 1h at a time.

Or look at this video https://dn720701.ca.archive.org/0/items/openlibrary-tour-2020/openlibrary.mp4

That means that if the Internet Archive and its partner libraries have only one copy of a book, then only one patron can borrow it at a time, just like other library lending.

Lending and renting stuff is not piracy! Many corporate suits want people to start believing this. but i remember going to the library and renting books, movies and games. it was not piracy back then, and it wont be now.

looks like itch.io is down too. might be a coincidence or someone trying to show off…

@[email protected] already mentioned one. And it does not really matter what the can do specifically to you. It matters what they can do and that you have no control. If you want to know what people can do with just your username look at this project: https://github.com/sherlock-project/sherlock. Now imagine what someone with more data can do.

Yes but No. For most people writing this kind of mail should not be a problem. However, for many different reasons it can become difficult to write such things: This mail is some kind of formal letter and alters a contract. Let’s imagine someone with a learning disability, they may be able to sign up for a online service, as they have done it many times. Writing a formal letter they may not have done many times and they cannot map past experiences the same way as a neurotypical person.

Depending on the local law this may be a reason why forced arbitration has to be opt-in: Typically the law should protect the weaker party. As the barrier for writing this letter is higher than the sign-up process, there is an argument that the chosen opt-out process of discord is targeted against some of their weakest customers.

Good question, but: Why would Discord ever expect to be in a lawsuit or arbitration with you? Most people, like you, use it to chat with people they barely know and give them no money. Still discord think it is necessary to take away legal rights from all their users.

Small businesses can individually refuse to do business with the big shopping mall -> add threads to the block list (‘defederate’ them)

The big shopping mall is not allowed to put their building at the public square -> threads is not allowed to use ActivityPub

The first statement is totally ok and a lot of instances do this. However, similar like shopping malls it can pose a challenge for small businesses to stay competitive, while categorically refusing business with the big actor. The second statement would require the towns construction committee to not give the shopping mall a license to build. However, this construction committee is a centralised power and not in the design of ActivityPub.

I do not like threads and see them as a potential threat to what we have here. Exactly because it could become harder to stay competitive while refusing them. But i don’t see much that we can actively do.

“We can’t federate” is not really an option… Sure, every instance can add threads to the blocked list. But to keep big corporations out of ‘our public square’ ActivityPub would have to be twisted into a grotesque version of itself.

It’s a very good RPG, not the second coming of Christ.

That just shows what people want. Just a solid game, playable from start to finish. Due to time constraints i never finished Witcher 3 and barely made it past the prologue of BG3. But both those games are highly celebrated.

They don’t reinvent the wheel. They are just very solid games and come without predatory pricing.

Something that sounds like a production flaw to me is how the IRS gets corrupted. Sadly the article did not go too much into detail, but gyroscopes and accelerometers should not be affected by GPS data. Sure, if they do not sync up with current data, error propagation becomes a problem - especially on long flights. But i reckon gradually depreciating data is better than maliciously wrong data.

The article mentioned, that large plains have 2 GPS receivers. The spooving seems less traditional (sending wrong data with more power), but more sending a lot of incomplete data to confuse the receiver. This should introduce a desynchronization of the two receivers present, and alert the internal systems. Since it is detected, that something went wrong with the GPS, the 3 IRS can calculate the position from recorded data. This is a fallback and accuracy will depreciate. But if the pilot is aware it could still be valuable information. Additionally it is more scalable than air traffic control having to navigate affected planes.

I agree, that the snail mail comparison limps. I just included it, since you brought it up initially. Lets drop it for now.

You are arguing that simply broadcasting an analog signal fulfils delivery, even if no device is receiving it. This deviates from your initial technical limitations argument, but lets assume this is true. If broadcasting a signal without caring whether it is received or if it is, by how many devices, fulfils delivery. Then a streaming service simply needs to make their advertisement available (eg. ads.mestream.com or as clickable content on mestream.com). The ads are available for everyone and no one cares whether or how many devices access them. Most streaming services go further than that and programmatically force people to watch those ads by playing them before the main-content or by similar means.

But we know that TV stations operate differently from how you described. If no one would care if and by how many devices the signal is received, there would not be any pricing difference. But since the tech allows to know rather accurate how many devices receive a signal, a spot at 8pm is much more expensive than 3am. So we know TV stations and advertisers using TV do care about how many devices receive that signal. I would go even further and say they actually care about how many people see the advertisement. But since the technical limitation does not allow this insight, number of devices is the closest value to monitor.

I am repeating myself, but YouTube not wanting to provide services to people who neither pay a subscription or watch ads is within their rights. Whether it is a viable business strategy will show. But for you to call using an ad-block theft, that just doesn’t make sense. Unless you also call it theft, to turn off your TV during commercials. If it becomes a technically and legally viable to analyse how many people are watching those ads, it would become theft to close your eyes.

Edit: changed the URLs, so they do not point to an existing service.

You didn’t answer my question though. If someone turns off their TV during commercials, the content is not delivered. If someone puts up a “please no ads” sticker, it becomes illegal to put advertisement in the mailbox (at least where i life). In both cases the materials are not delivered. Is that theft?

Your argument hinges on technical limitation: Since it cannot be confirmed whether snail mail advertisement was looked at, the delivery person gets paid for putting in the letterbox. Since the TV station does not know exactly how many people watch their commercial breaks, they get paid for broadcasting. Since streaming services can relatively accurately check how many times an ad was played, they only get paid for the exact number and it is stealing to not download it.

TV stations nowadays have much more advanced capabilities and they do know rather accurately how many devices are watching their signal. So if an advertiser wants access to this data and sees that people turn off their devices during commercials as @Dontfearthereaper123 described - should the advertiser be allowed to pay less? If the advertiser pays less, does turning off your TV become stealing?

If YouTube started to (legally) access your webcam. Would closing your eyes and plugging your ears during ads become stealing?

It clearly isn’t theft to use an adblock. It is simply electing what contents are played on your own machine. If it was theft to not download ads, it would be theft to grab something from the fridge during TV ads. Ad-absurdum we would end up in that black mirror episode where they force you to watch ads and lock the room.

That being said. I believe it is within googles rights to make the life of not paying customers hard. Whether it is a smart decision, is another question.

I agree with you, that even the devil would run away from localised scripts.

Just pointing out that even if everyone is using English, there will be differences. These differences can make it hard enough - no need for more stuff on top.

Same problem, except it is even more niche. Does not really make sense as a YT stand-in. Tied into a collected feed it makes sense, which luckily is enabled by apps like Grayjay.

Even if everyone is using English, there will be cultural differences. I used to work at a company which had a lot of indian externals working on their code base. Whenever I had to work on a mainly Indian developed project i had to get used to how they wrote things. Usually things where named a bit different. Not by much, but enough tho throw me off a couple of times before i got used to it.

IMPORTANT: I am not shitting on how they used English, merely pointing out that they used it differently from how i would have expected.

I want to believe that you are right - but don’t think you are. I wanted to switch over to rumble. But, except two, none of the creators i regularly watch are there. Fine, let’s try Odysee: geoblocking my location atm.

The only reason, why i use other platforms is Grayjay. It aggregates content from wherever you want and creates one feed. If it wasn’t for this app, i’d probably only use YT with better adblocks.

That is the extent of their monopoly right now.