The Internet Archive Starts Seeding Over a Million Torrents 180
An anonymous reader writes with news that The Internet Archive has started seeding about 1,400,000 torrents. In addition to over a million books, the Archive is seeding thousands and thousands of films, music tracks, and live concerts. John Gilmore of the EFF said, "The Archive is helping people to understand that BitTorrent isn't just for ephemeral or dodgy items that disappear from view in a short time. BitTorrent is a great way to get and share large files that are permanently available from libraries like the Internet Archive." Brewster Kahle, founder of the Archive, told TorrentFreak, "I hope this is greeted by the BitTorrent community, as we are loving what they have built and are very glad we can populate the BitTorrent universe with library and archive materials. There is a great opportunity for symbiosis between the Libraries and Archives world and the BitTorrent communities."
Next move (Score:5, Funny)
The *AAs start suing the Internet Archive.
Re:Next move (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually it provides plausible denial for encrypted torrent traffic. Breaking the encryption for purposes other than download is being complicit. It puts and end to the Star I AA's case, finally!
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Re:Next move (Score:5, Funny)
Assorted Assholes. aka. RIAA, MPAA, GEMA... list is long.
Re:Next move (Score:5, Informative)
They're German, and AA mostly stands for "Association of America".
(The G isn't for "German"; obviously if they had that in the name it'd be "D".)
The "bunch of assholes" part is accurate however.
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In GEMA's case, it roughly means "multitudes of assholes."
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What is an AA?
They provide a car breakdown/recovery service in the UK.
Re:Next move (Score:5, Funny)
What is an AA?
It's a bit bigger than an AAA.
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It's short for MAFIAA.
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What is an AA?
Alcoholics Anonymous [kuro5hin.org]. You're anonymous, do you drink?
What's the difference between a drunk and an alcoholic? Alcoholics have to go to meetings! (I saw that on a drunkard's t-shirt once)
Re:Next move (Score:4, Interesting)
"To no man shall be sold or denied natural justice."
One of the core principles of the oldest written constitutional document in existence: Magna Carta.
If you have to bankrupt yourself to fight a lawsuit then you're not doing it right.
Re:Next move (Score:5, Insightful)
"flooding the torrent channels"?
That is so not how BitTorrent works.
Re:Next move (Score:5, Funny)
...flooding the torrent channels...
That is so not how BitTorrent works.
You are correct. RFC 5694 - Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Architecture: Definition, Taxonomies, Examples, and Applicability clearly states that "BitTorrent traffic MUST NOT: FLOOD the CHANNELS, CLOG the TUBES, or OVERLOAD the TRUCKS."
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Nothing a few poker chips can't clear up I'm sure.
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flooding the torrent channels.
Mod parent down -1, Talking Out Of Arse.
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Oh, come on! I heard that exact phrase used by one of the techies in an episode of 24
How about Freenet? (Score:2, Interesting)
Could the Internet Archive ever validate Freenet in the same way? Show that it can be used for fault tolerant archiving of static data, and not just subversive/illegal speech?
Re:How about Freenet? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think they are trying to "validate" bittorrent. That's just a side effect of what they are doing. They are simply using one of the most efficient and cost effective ways of distributing data because it helps them, and possibly makes a better experience for the users.
freenet offers anonymity but they don't really need that here. Bittorrent also offers fault tolerance, doesn't it?
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I'd bet $100 that the EFF is trying to validate BitTorrent. They have a history of trying to protect and validate Torrents (and piracy). Examples:
"EFF Releases ‘Switzerland’ to Test if Your ISP is Throttling BitTorrent" - http://www.zeropaid.com/news/9677/eff_releases_switzerland_to_test_if_your_isp_is_throttling_bittorrent/ [zeropaid.com]
"EFF defended StreamCast Networks, the company behind the Morpheus peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing software, in
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Hash matching provides that fault tolerance. If segment hashes don't match then the file corrupts. The Bittorrent protocol is written to deal with that by rejecting segments with unmatched hashes. Freenet not needed, because anonymity is not required here.
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Freenet cannot be used for archiving data; it is designed specifically to distribute "live" data (data in motion). Freenet only keeps data as long as people are actively using it. If nobody uses a file for a while and something else becomes more popular, the ignored item will be overwritten with the new item.
Torrents, on the other hand, last for as long as there is a seeder available (and assuming perfect distribution, can even survive periods of no seed available, as long as there's at least one client w
SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY! (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, wait, you don't want to?
Fine, I'll ask the Russians instead. They always have what I want, in the best format possible, for free.
This is what enrages me the most today. Everyone is busy off complaining about piracy and bullshit, when they're not making their products readily available in a format I can actually use. I've lost count how many times I've walked into BestBuy holding a bundle of $20 bills only to be turned away because they don't stock something. The last time I went there it was for a Disney movie for the kids- only to be told point blank by the salesman who went into the back looking for the Bluray disk that Disney had stopped producing them (this was a year old movie- hell, we had it in theatres up until about 4 months ago) so that they could re-release it again in a special edition in a few months and charge full pop once more.
I've gone into more music stores then I can remember looking for CDs of good music (none of this modern day auto-tuned bullshit or the crap where there's some white boy rapping through a telephone effect patch to hard-panned deep beats), and I almost never find what I'm looking for. Then I land up having to either buy the CD from Europe or direct from the band and waiting ~4 weeks for it to show up in the mail- and I've still got to go prod the Russians for a nice FLAC copy to listen to in the meantime.
Hell, there's been TV series I would HAPPILY pay for to watch and enjoy with my family if I could actually get them on DVD or BR. But no, because of licensing-this-and-licensing-that, once again I'm being denied the ability to PAY FOR my entertainment by the VERY SAME people who sit around bitching and complaining about piracy all day long.
About half a year ago I got a letter from my ISP basically complaining about the fact that I'd been downloading stuff and someone else was angry about it. It was funny at the time because had I been able to get what I was looking for locally- or even off the internet and mailed to me- I wouldn't have pirated the stuff. After searching the internet for a few hours and finding nothing, I turned to my usual set of trackers and had the thing downloaded in 2 hours. It still makes me chuckle to think that someone out there was peeved enough about me downloading their product to actually complain to my ISP about it, even though their product was made of unobtanium *anywhere*.
If these people don't want to take my money when I'm literally holding it out to them, arms outstretched, begging them to take it- and all I get in response is a resounding "NO.", I have no sympathy for any of them. The fact that BT is still going stronger then ever today is awesome. Maybe one day the corporate fuckheads of the world will wake up and figure things out, and start taking my money in a sane manner so that both parties can benefit from the exchange.
-AC (for obvious reasons)
Re:SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY! (Score:4, Informative)
After searching the internet for a few hours and finding nothing, I turned to my usual set of trackers and had the thing downloaded in 2 hours. It still makes me chuckle to think that someone out there was peeved enough about me downloading their product to actually complain to my ISP about it, even though their product was made of unobtanium *anywhere*.
Exactly. I download a ton of stuff over the internet, mostly older movies, TV series and documentaries in foreign languages, because it's just not available anywhere. It's illegal alright, but the legal risk to me, which is already very low, is made even lower by the fact that (1) the stuff I download isn't exactly prime-time material and (2) there really are no other sources for it, and that's a bloody good excuse I reckon.
I just don't understand why copyright holders don't grok that people prefer clicking twice in the comfort of their living room to visiting a brick-and-mortar store, or scouring the internet in search of a legit copy of the stuff and finding nothing, or finding something and going through the typical online store shopping cart rigmarole, then waiting a week for the stuff to arrive.
Re:SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY! (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish we had a law saying that you can obtain something for free if the copyright holders refuse to sell it to you. This would keep a lot of this horrible litigation from ever occurring.
Re:SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY! (Score:4, Informative)
Intellectual property law is designed to protect the creator's right to control the property. It carries no obligation to make the property (or music or movie) available to others. It simply prevents others from doing so for the duration.
Some copyright holders seem to believe that scarcity can be profitable. Thus Disney can bring out Snow White every 30 years and make a killing, whereas if it was always available the price would have deteriorated considerably. And somehow they are able to protect their copyrights forever...
Re:SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY! (Score:5, Insightful)
Intellectual property law is designed to protect the creator's right to control the property. It carries no obligation to make the property (or music or movie) available to others
One could argue that the whole purpose of copyright is to benefit the society by stimulating the creation of new works that the society can then enjoy, but the part where the works exist but are denied to society under any terms kind of makes the copyright pointless, so the question is whether it should even apply to those cases.
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Has anybody mathematically proven that the current copyright laws are detrimental to the sciences and useful arts? If we could do that maybe we could get some laws struck down as unconstitutional. (I know, I'm dreaming...)
Re:SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY! (Score:4, Insightful)
Has anybody mathematically proven that the current copyright laws are detrimental to the sciences and useful arts? If we could do that maybe we could get some laws struck down as unconstitutional. (I know, I'm dreaming...)
It's a nice idea: the problem is that the only maths our current crop of politicians understand is how to calculate how much money is being contributed to their re-election fund, and by whom...
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I'm not sure that's possible. However, you can show it "likely" to be true by analyzing industries that do not have intellectual property now, and industries that did not have intellectual property, but now do.
Fortunately, someone has already done this work for you. Search for "Against Intellectual Monopoly", a freely available book, which explores this very issue.
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Math doesn't apply. Lawrence Lessig took copyright lengths all the way to the SCOTUS, who ruled that "limited times" means whatever Congress says it means. The only way to get is changed is with legislation -- and good luck with THAT.
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Oh, it's easy to change it with legislation. The problem is that the easy change is limited to lengthening the terms.
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Re:SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY! (Score:4, Interesting)
High five to Parent! I'm also a creator, and happily post under my handle because I like a little recognition every now and again.
What really bugs me is the fact that when I release stuff into the Public Domain these days I have to coat it with a generous helping of licenses that tell people they can basically do what they want with the content - in my opinion, this is a natural right, not something that can be taken with one litigious hand and grudgingly *sold* back with the other. This I believe distracts the consumer from the real message of the content: the aesthetic value of whatever medium the content happens to take. How do I make my money then, I hear some naysayers ask... simple really: I let my public domain work speak for itself and get paid through commissioned work (which, because I already have a brand. I don't mind transferring ownership of that work to the client because the idea is theirs, I just point the camera or hit the "record" button and capture their content for them. Art as a service).
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The nice thing about IP law is that it is just that... a law. You can change it to say anything you want.
If we decide to put in a penalty for not making stuff available, we can do that.
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I understand that the US government reserves the right to take control of intellectual property under certain circumstances (national security? not sure what else).
If an invention, discovery or entertainment production were judged terribly essential to life on earth, the government could make it available to us despite the creator's stubborn urge to keep it from us.
So if that book you want is out of print, ask the government to step in.
Eminent domain (Score:2)
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It's not property, it's a creative work that gets the name "intellectual property" via legislation. You change the law that defines "intellectual property" and the 5th Amendment has no bearing. Without IP law, there would be no IP - there would be nothing for the 5th Amendment to protect in that regard.
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You change the law that defines "intellectual property" and the 5th Amendment has no bearing.
The United States is a party to WTO treaties including TRIPS and Berne, and as long as WTO treaties are in force, the United States has to treat copyrights of foreign authors as property.
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Yes, but...
There is a lot of wiggle room. For instance, copyright only is required by TRIPS to be 50 years, but it is much longer in the US.
And of course, one could exit or renegotiate the treaties, with all that entails. The US is the primary driver of them anyway.
Only elected legislators can do that (Score:2)
You can change it to say anything you want.
No, only elected legislators can do that, and guess who controls who gets to run for office [pineight.com].
Not so easy... (Score:3)
I wish we had a law saying that you can obtain something for free if the copyright holders refuse to sell it to you. This would keep a lot of this horrible litigation from ever occurring.
So instead of refusing to sell, they can just set the price for dealers/distributors to be absurdly high - it's still available for sale. Example: for extended periods, Disney could set the wholesale price of a licensed copy of a particular movie on DVD/BR to about $200million. Then, for a limited time, the wholesale price could drop to $20, so retailers can sell it for about $30 or so. Problem solved, and largely indistinguishable from the present, where Disney simply refuses to sell particular movies for
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But that's Disney purposefully manipulating things, still with intention to sell their movies.
Most of the time companies either never ever release their movies and TV series in a usable format, or do it so late, people forget what those things were about. The effect on the company is the opposite -- Disney probably makes more money by behaving unethically (they do it to products with lasting popularity, creating the impression of rarity, and everyone who is interested still ends up buying), those companies
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I read a story several years ago about a company (I can't remember who it was) that refused to sell a product that would have made an absolute killing. Another company decided to take up the slack and fill the hole in the market with a similar product, which the first company took upon itself to litigate. Sometime during the court process, the first company then did release the product, but at such a high unit price it was basically unsellable.
Had the court missed this tactic the first company would have wo
Intellectual property tax (Score:5, Interesting)
Wouldn't work because they ARE willing to sell. (Score:2)
There was a dutch version of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. As a naive kid I inquired how it could be obtained. The NOS would very happy to supply the copyrighted material. All I would have to do was pay a sound engineer to make the copies. The price was... well... rather high doesn't do it justice.
But it is available... for a price...
You can probably get any movie you want to. For a couple of million.
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This is a shining example of misapplication of copyright. When copyright was originally implemented, there was only one way to publish something: you printed it, bound it, and published it as a book (which people were then free to resell). It was never intended to allow the copyrighter to control *how* the work was distributed, because the question didn't arise.
Now, copyright has the unfortunate side-effect that the copyrighter can control the form in which a work is published, where it's available, etc.
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This is a shining example of misapplication of copyright. When copyright was originally implemented, there was only one way to publish something: you printed it, bound it, and published it as a book (which people were then free to resell). It was never intended to allow the copyrighter to control *how* the work was distributed, because the question didn't arise.
Now, copyright has the unfortunate side-effect that the copyrighter can control the form in which a work is published, where it's available, etc. This is actually fairly simple to remedy: allow anyone to publish the work, provided that they provide (say) 50% of revenue to the person who holds the copyright.
Perfect, I am giving away stuff for free. Here is your 50%, Mr. MPAA Member.
Re:SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY! (Score:5, Informative)
If we are fortunate we have 80 years on this Earth. Grab a camera and go OUT THERE and write about what you see. Make a differencein your community. Write a book. But please, I beseech you, stop sitting watching pointless crap on TV.
Why do you assume people who watch TV automatically watch pointless crap and waste their lives?
Yes, 95% of TV is crap. But the remaining 5%, which I watch from time to time, makes me discover other parts of the world I'll never go to, explains scientific discoveries to me, teaches me history, tells me what's happening in the world, lets me practice other languages, exposes current issues in society, etc.
The non-idiotic part of the idiot box can entertain you intelligently without taking very much of your time, if only because there isn't much of it in between ads, reality TV shows and the Olympics. Of course, if you don't dig these things, then TV certainly has the capability of making you very dumb indeed.
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Groucho Marx sums it up best
I find TV very educational. Everytime someone turns one on, I go in the other room and read a book.
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So what you're saying is that 95% of TV gives the other 5% a bad name?
Re:SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY! (Score:5, Funny)
And maybe then you'll realise how much of your short life you wasted sitting in front of the TV.
Says the guy who wastes hours of his short life in front of a computer monitor. Oh wait, no, he's only here 5 minutes a day folks, he's not like "the rest". Sounds like someone is suffering from "I'm a special princess" syndrome. Why do you think that you are significantly different from everyone else who posts here, princess? And no, you can't have a pony.
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You can't have my woona! Nobody can have my woona! MY WOONA!!!
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Write a book. But please, I beseech you, stop sitting watching pointless crap on TV.
How about I write a screenplay? Maybe I'll even take that screenplay and some actors, and make a TV show. Maybe someone will watch it, and understand the artistic message that inspired my show. Maybe it will give someone hope that this difficult time in their life isn't that bad. Maybe it will convince someone to finally get outside and exercise. My art could change the world, if not for that jackass who thinks it's just pointless crap.
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Ever try to download something from amazon with linux? They dont make it easy
Are you referring to the lack of official DVD and BD playback software shipped with GNU/Linux distributions?
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I don't think there is a DVD/BD player shipped with Windows 7 either...? At least, I've not found one in fifteen months of looking...
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Technical Details please (Score:2)
Thats a lot torrents to seed, i assume they arent just running a tracker.
What sort of setup do they have, what bittorrent software do they use ?
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http://techie-buzz.com/how-to/what-are-web-seeds-bittorrent.html [techie-buzz.com]
I'm guessing it's just webseeds beyond just running the tracker.
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remember this is archive.org an organisation that frequently* snapshots the entire** internet. Their IT infrastructure is something quite impressive.
*okay sites that are updated frequently get more refreshes - you can watch back in time and see how news sites react to world events, but blogs less so.
** okay only really websites that are static and don't have a robots.txt
Torrents should be used for software updates (Score:2, Interesting)
A really good use for torrents would be software updates.
If a big software company (say, Adobe or Microsoft) would seed their patch releases as torrents, it would instantly bring torrents into the general public mindshare as a legitimate downloading tool. More importantly for the companies involved, it would also save them vast amounts of bandwidth (especially for the bigger files).
For a company like Adobe or MS, what's not to like about that? They don't even need to worry about the piracy danger, because w
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Secondly, the cost/bandwidth associated for the companies isn't a major factor. It may look a lar
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Good thing you started with the disclaimer since the protocol automatically hashes every chuck making this a non-issue.
But who do you get the hash from? If it's from a peer then the hash could presumably be poisoned too?
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But who do you get the hash from?
The hashes come from the torrent file.
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Re:Torrents should be used for software updates (Score:4, Insightful)
OK, man, but your argument has been countered successfully. The BT protocol works out of the box the way how validated downloads work: they send you a hash, and once you downloaded, it will check if the file produces the same hash as the source. Can the hash be faked? Sure, there are some ways to do that, but that is a problem with HTTP downloads as well. From a cost and technical point of view BT should be perfectly legitimate choice for a company to distribute their shit.
The real deal here is the bad reputation of BT in the media. There's a whole crusade against file sharing and BT in particular, the technology is associated with criminals, hackerz, child pornography, necrophilia, and communism. Can you imagine the suits in the director board meeting taking the chances for such an association? They rather pay for bandwidth. As a side effect, our internet infrastructure is distorted with having terrible download/upload speed ratios and you have to pay a fortune just for getting a static ip with a decent upload speed. If central repository distribution is a business model that became supported by many parties, including ISPs, cloud service providers, social media and audio/video streaming.
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OK, man, but your argument has been countered successfully
One of the reasons behind my argument, yes, but the main reason that I was pointing to with a few examples (risk-averseness) you've basically agreed with "Can you imagine the suits in the director board meeting taking the chances for such an association?"
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um... bad blocks aren't generally propagated; my client junks the bad block and rejects any further packets from the source, and looks elsewhere for a good version of that block. Hashes are good. Poisoned torrents usually start off like that and are initially seeded by people intent on poisoning the torrent pool from the off (ie null files or malware designed to fuck up your day, seeded by **AA agencies on farms to look like insanely popular movies/albums. I've seen this happen, those torrents don't live lo
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Didn't Steam hire the creator of BitTorrent (Bram Cohen, I think) to work on how it distributes its software updates?
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I toyed with the idea of torrenting drivers for obsolete hardware. I have PCI cards that still work, and drivers for them that still run under XPSP3 - those that still prove useful are even now plugged into my museum piece of an Athlon running almost on a daily basis. The problem is, when you're beyond the realms of graphics cards and into RAID controllers, composite video capture cards, professional soundcards, multiport network controllers, SATA arrays, IDE stacks, printers, scanners, faxes, jukeboxes, et
Sends the wrong message.. (Score:5, Funny)
It's shocking that a once responsible organisation takes it upon itself to blur the distinct in the public mind of the role played by torrents in the distribution of files. Much effort and money has been expended to educate the public and their political representitive as to the true negative impact of this technology on the economic welfare of the managers of content creators.
This wrong minded attempt to compete directly with current content with alternatives that are outside the control of the industry leaders shows the miss use of public moneys in an othrwise open market and I feel certain that come review of that funding influent will be brought to bear that will effect either that funding or the management structure.
Other key words: feedom, open markets, children, economy, health, security
Lots of good content in there... (Score:5, Informative)
... for instance, here are audio recordings of Asimov's Foundation Trilogy:
http://archive.org/details/IsaacAsimov-TheFoundationTrilogy [archive.org]
_This_ is what the civilian Internet was intended for: spreading information and culture.
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that is awesome. just curious though. there are some publication localities and time periods where public domain is difficult to determine.
http://wiki.librivox.org/index.php/Copyright_and_Public_Domain#Determining_Copyright_Status_in_the_United_States [librivox.org]
This page doesn't list good bibliographical data. a review/comment mentions 'BBC sound lab'. I know these guys are diligent, but am I missing something?
Re:Lots of good content in there... (Score:4, Informative)
Guys, the best thing about archive.org is the FACT that the musicians there specifically authorized the archive to legally provide this music free of charge. This is live recordings. You know, promoting their art by offering live music for free, to interest you enought that you buy their studio releases, see their live shows, and request them on the radio (rarer and rarer, but there are still some stations supporting indie music).
Hot lists (Score:5, Informative)
I had trouble getting to the hotlist, I was finally able to reach the page and Coral too. Here are the 2 cached pages:
http://bt1.archive.org.nyud.net/hotlist.php [nyud.net]
http://bt2.archive.org.nyud.net/hotlist.php [nyud.net]
Cue the DMCA takedown notices in... (Score:4, Interesting)
...5... 4... 3... 2...
I kid. I've used IA a lot. Their movie archive is awesome, I've discovered some real gems on there, and even managed to make a living making and selling compilations (yes, you can actually do that legally with the material on there, and a lot of other people do!)
What's rare/highly valuable that needs preserving? (Score:2)
I only have so many terabytes and megabits per second, which of these torrents should I help preserve? Anything? I mean they're pretty well-preserved already I think, and totally legit so it's not like anyone's trying to get rid of them...
Re:These Guys (Score:5, Insightful)
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This.
I watched a few DVDs (again) recently - and being unable to get right into the movie pissed me off so much, mostly because I wasn't used to it anymore.
Some Linux players did it right - ignore all the "don't skip me" flags and jump right to the start of the movie when the DVD is started. If I want the menu, I can click one button.
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Re:Changing perceptions of BitTorrent...? (Score:4, Insightful)
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
Forgoiong a discussion on whether or not the "entertainment" in question actually promotes Progress or is useful, it does seem to say that after a certain period of time that "entertainment" will no longer be protected by an "exclusive Right." Certainly you don't have a problem with the Constitution, do you?
Re:And where does all this content come from? (Score:5, Insightful)
Movies used to be made and paid for on the basis that they'd be seen ONCE. Now the entertainment corporations want multiple kicks at the can. They want their first run theatre rights, which they've always had, PLUS DVD, Netflix, cable television, regular television and merchandizing revenue.
You aren't being "realistic". You're not even a troll. You're an industry bum-kisser. Why don't you tell us all how much money "The Avengers" made, then try to tell us again how the industry is bleeding to death.
Re:And where does all this content come from? (Score:5, Insightful)
Duh - "The Avengers" lost money. Every film that Hollywood makes loses money. Especially the ones with the biggest box-office numbers [guardian.co.uk].
Didn't you know, the entire industry is funded by multi-billionaire philanthropists? The only reason they insist on you buying tickets is so they can count how many peoples lives they are enriching.
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I do wonder if that leaked net profit statement was the one for the taxman, or the one for the shareholders.
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the share/interest-holders of the various in-between corps get their profit statements in the form of a check. that's why the movies never make a profit.
Re:And where does all this content come from? (Score:5, Interesting)
How it works [wikipedia.org]
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\begin{LionelHutz}
There's the truth *frowning and shakes his head* that we tell the IRS and anyone with a contract entitling them to a share of the profits, and the truth *grinning and nodding his head* that we tell our Swiss bank accounts.
\end{LionelHutz}
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See? I just proved that shoplifting doesn't harm anybody!
Re:And where does all this content come from? (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you know what happens with all of that money earned by litigation against piracy? It goes directly back into the pockets of the anti-piracy groups. That's right -- while the industry kicks and screams about those poor starving artists in court, they don't lift a finger to help them out with the money that should go to the artists.
So don't go pointing your fingers at the pirates. Point your fingers at the people who license and manage the content. They're the ones controlling its distribution and taking a good big cut of the profits for themselves. What, you think the writers and actors behind Game of Thrones had any control over whether or not they could make their stuff available on hulu or netflix?
Please, if you actually think that you need to pull your head out of the lala land the MAFIAA have created. It's not that people really aren't willing to pay -- it's that companies like HBO try their darnedest to give potential customers the worst treatment ever. Let's face it, would you go to the DMV and pay a fee, stand in line for hours, and then talk to a lady that's got an attitude OR would you rather click a few buttons and have your new registration appear right in front of you for free?
Re:And where does all this content come from? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And where does all this content come from? (Score:4, Informative)
Let's assume I pirate everything I can. Let's then count how many ways the media industry makes money off me.
Let's say I go out on a date to the moves. *check*
Perhaps I realise the cinema AV system is better than my home one, so for movies that are quite AV intensive I make sure I see them there *check*
I listen to music on the radio *check*
I still buy books because I prefer the dead tree format *check*
Still go to the theatre
Still go to concerts
Still watch TV (with adverts)
etc
Even if I did pirate rampantly there is still a healthy income stream there, I see no reason why this would kill off the entertainment industry. Remember "Home taping is killing music"
The wrong business model (Score:3)
The content industry doesn't have the business model of making a sustained profit, they have the business model of making MORE AND MORE AND MORE MONEY! If the content industry was run by the supermarkets, your example would work. But it is not. It is run by people who make wallstreet bankers look wholesome and they want ever more cash from you.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So your solution would be what? Following through your logic, we should all give them money if they've said they've had something pirated. We should pay for something that others didn't. Because without us doing that, we'd have no movies. A bit like those rich people who "fund" the ballet (which is also pretty profitable, I'd like to add)?
Or maybe they should stop treating movies solely as a way to make themselves rich and actually, you know, make something people can enjoy watching. Let's ignore the f
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Take away the profit and you take away the reason to create new content to share.
What's with these "no new content" arguments? I highly doubt that there would be no new content whatsoever. That supposes that there are no people that would create free content simply because they love doing so, no people that would raise money using crowdfunding, and no people that would raise money with concerts (or some other method). The point is, I find it extremely highly unlikely that no new content would be created.
Yes I know fan movies will save us all but are you honestly pirating fan movies or "The avengers"?
That would depend on the person, wouldn't it?
I see the end coming and no one will be happy with the final outcome.
If they seriously can't find a way to
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Re: (Score:2)
I'm sorry, could you explain what share of this cheese you're entitled to, having done nothing to contribute to the making of it?
Re: (Score:2)
Everything more than 20 years old?
Re: (Score:2)
Mod parent up. I've run a Public Domain Torrent mirror for years. It has the entire Project Gutenberg archive on there (as of May this year), and a significant chunk of the eTree LMO. If you've downloaded anything off either of those two sites over BitTorrent over the last five years or so, chances are good you got some of that data off of my server.
Re: (Score:2)
John Gilmore of the EFF said, "The Archive is helping people to understand that BitTorrent isn't just for ephemeral or dodgy items that disappear from view in a short time. BitTorrent is a great way to get and share large files that are permanently available from libraries like the Internet Archive."
In other words, the EFF is working towards legitimizing BitTorrent so that illegal uses can continue unabated.
Huh? How did you pull that message out of the statement you just quoted?