Precursor | Crowd Supply just saw that Bunnie, one of the guys behind the novena open laptops a few years ago, just crowdsourced succesfully an open software and hardware phone thing called Precursor running on risc-V. Rust gets a special mention in the 2 min video there at the top describing the project. Looks amazing. Possible loyal little Earners in a few years these gadgets 
3 Likes
The Sci-Hub website says it “removes all barriers” to science.
It offers open access to more than 85 million scientific papers and claims that copyright laws should be abolished and that such material should be “knowledge to all”.
It describes itself as “the first pirate website in the world to provide mass and public access to tens of millions of research papers”.
6 Likes
I actually worked for a company which hosted and published various scientific journals. Many of these had their data pushed onto this site. I remember the questions being asked of how they could be stopped/blocked, whether it was due to hacking, etc. It wasn’t. It was due to some users with accounts, downloading them, then uploading them.
Now, you could argue that these accounts were being compromised, then used by the hackers to upload the papers. I don’t remember this being a suspicion at the time, though. It seemed more likely that there were some folks that were sympathetic with freeing this data for everyone, for the good of science.
Reflecting on this now, it has parallels with Safe Network shared private data. As soon as someone has access to it, they can take copies, upload them elsewhere, etc.
“Students should be aware that accessing such websites is illegal, as it hosts stolen intellectual property,” said Det Insp Kevin Ives.
Yes, that approach worked well for stopping Napster… 
3 Likes
Actually accessing the website to view is not illegal under copyright law. It is the uploading that is a criminal offence (illegal). The viewing is a civil case and not illegal. So much for the police being truthful in this case.
4 Likes
Didn’t they go after downloaders with napster too though?
I must admit though, it does seem like pretty shaky ground. How can a consumer know whether they can or can’t see it? Can they even unsee it, if they just viewed it?
alsorts of dissonance follows copyright interest… a clear indication that there’s something wrong with the premise.
5 Likes
100% … ideas are not property in my view. If you want exclusive use of an idea, then keep it a secret.
8 Likes
Software is actually shifting more and more to this perspective. Does it stop software being written? No, but it changes how it is funded. People often sell the service of building the software instead.
Some people are very attached to the idea of copyright though. I do get that. It can feel like theft, when your idea/work is copied by another for profit. On the flip side monopolising an idea for profit doesn’t seem that fair on others either.
Maybe we just need to move on from the concept.
5 Likes
I don’t mind if someone want to keep a secret and monopolize what they discovered … but if it leaks out, oh well.
2 Likes
Not the police. You see copyright is divided into 2 parts with what you are not supposed to do.
- Those who “perform” or make available the content owned by another, and
- Those who consume content owned by another and not being provided through an authorised means/media.
For those who “perform” or make available (eg upload, torrent to others) copyrighted content is handled by the criminal justice system. It is against the law in other words. Still not stealing as the copyright work has not been removed from the authorised “person’s” possession. The police can arrest and/or take the person to court to be convicted of a crime.
For those who consume/possess copyrighted material have violated the rights bestowed by copyright legislation and have committed a civil violation. The copyright owner can take the person to civil court and demand damages to be paid. The police cannot take any action unless there is something the court orders, like to grab the person to appear.
For napster the uploaders (most who use it initially and many after) had criminal action against them and the media companies tried to civilly get monies from those listening to the material. I cannot remember the outcomes as I never used napster or cared too at the time.
The reason torrents get such a hard time is by default people using it are also uploading and it becomes easy for the media companies to go after them because they can use the criminal justice system to get the conviction and damages is real easy to get afterwards if they want.
7 Likes
That’s a great post, @neo. Thanks!
I hadn’t realised it was so nuanced, but it makes a lot of sense.
So, we should consider the impact of the above on safe network.
- We know that users will be able to upload data anonymously, which will make it hard for authorities to take action.
- We know that farmers will have no knowledge of what they are hosting. Indeed it will be impossible for them to find out. This also protects farmers.
- We know that retrieving data will also beanonymous, so consumers are protected against civil action.
- We know the platform will not have a kill switch and will be very difficult to block, protecting the network itself.
- The developers have no control over what any of the above do. They just build the infrastructure. Those building roads don’t get arrested when a criminal drives on them.
I wonder who they will go after first? I wonder if they will get anything to stick?
5 Likes
Like they do with torrents (or used to do) and that is pay big dollars to private investigators.
My thought is they will try and find some connection of the uploader to some real world situation. Maybe in a forum someone will say “I just uploaded such-n-such” and from there they will try and unravel the users identification.
Basically they will trace people by them making mistakes or being loose with their tongues. Say someone uploads a bunch of media and brags about it, or someone asks how they can get something and the uploader responds in a way that reveals they did it.
You are right though that if people are sensible then media will be as safe as whistle blowers material they upload.
When i read the copyright act back in the 70’s it was a case that a person stopped at lights blasting their latest cassette album causing the bystanders to enjoy the music as well, that they were also considered “performing” the work and thus criminals.
3 Likes
Loose tongues and poor clear net data hygiene seems to be the undoing of many folks, so I suspect you are right!
Ha! Yes, it’s pretty hard not to ‘consume’ the material in many cases!
I’m sure they will try some fresh legal angles due to the change in technology, but consumers do have precedence on their side.
There was a case in Australia (SA from memory) where two lads were copying movies etc and giving them to the poor people in the area (for free) and the media companies spend months collecting data/evidence to take them to court.
The Judge agreed with the media companies that the lads indeed broke the law.
The lads got a suspended sentence and let off with a stern warning.
The media companies complained bitterly and demand damages to recoup the millions they spent collecting the evidence and the Judge basically said to them that no one forced them to spend the millions. Guess it was too obvious a breach and did not require that sort of money.
In Australia the Judges are slow to award heavy penalties against the ordinary citizen for quite petty breaches of the act. Also they usually ask the cost to make a DVD (a few dollars) and base damages on that cost for those who download a movie and put it on a DVD for themselves.
Now do it on a commercial basis and watch out
4 Likes
It doesn’t sound like the poor people in the area would ever have bought the music either. So, it’s not like they had any lost earnings. It’s good to see common sense prevailing in these sorts of cases!
2 Likes
I’m not totally convinced of this yet. Data maps of public files show which chunks make up the file. I think that farmers currently know which chunks they hold, so they could have some knowledge of what they hold. I think introducing some indirection/encryption at the elder level was discussed briefly, in which case the heat would fall on the elders for having knowledge of chunk contents.
1 Like
So lets assume farmers know the chunks they hold. You now assume that the farmer has chunked up all possible files so that they can know what each chunk belongs to.
Otherwise there is assumed to be a searchable database that allows the farmer to submit the hash/XOR address of each chunk to then know what file they hold.
In both cases it is entirely unreasonable for any person to be expected to know the chunks they hold since both of the above is not reasonably possible considering the near infinite possibilities for files.
Thus even if a copyright investigator who is presumed to know the hash/XOR address of the works he is tasked for finding the holders thereof and was able to identify the IP address of the nodes holding said chunks. The media companies would need to get them into court and the Judge would learn that the person did not have any reasonable way to know they were holding a chunk violating copyright could not be reasonably convicted.
This also does not answer the question that holding 1 MB of encrypted data which cannot be converted into the original work is actually holding copyright material. The person needs to have at least 3 sequential chunks to recreate part of a copyright work
EDIT: Also the farmer does not hold the datamap (unencrypted) for the chunks they are holding so they cannot reach out to build the file to recreate it.
4 Likes
There is also another layer in play.
So assume we have a datamap. It tells us the chunk addresses. We then say OK the chunks are on XX computers and we can look on the network to see where the computers are and have their address and then IP:PORT etc. except we cannot.
Last year or so we implemented the network in it’s current most true form. So now you cannot look up a chunk holder on the network, easily.
The Elders of a section hold metadata and client keys etc. plus the databases of which Adults hold which chunks. That info is not published (of course) and not available outside a section.
So all we can do with the data map is to say this chunk is in that section, but we cannot see the Adults in a section, only the Elders. Therefor the Adults holding the data are unknown to the wider network and any clients.
This adds that little bit more obfuscation of where chunks live at any time and every bit helps.
11 Likes
my daily RISC-V post. This is an excellent blog post going into detail about the nitty gritty of funding and development of open hardware/software libre-type stuff, from a guy who I think is operating in England? Seems like a good fellow and an interesting project, in any case, I’ll be keeping an eye on it.
edit: https://libre-soc.org/ is the main website of all their projects. I’m going around it now, there’s loads of interesting stuff there for anyone interested in open hardware especially
2 Likes