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The closest thing we have to a meta-service is Meta-Elsevier, more popularly known as Sci-Hub, which works so well simply because it doesn't care about legality
by geofft 8y ago
The closest thing we have to a meta-service is Meta-Elsevier, more popularly known as Sci-Hub, which works so well simply because it doesn't care about legality. It's hosted outside the US on a slowly changing list of TLDs, and so it doesn't have to worry about any form of copyright law, not just the DMCA.
I think if you wanted to build more services like this, you'd have to go this approach: instead of building an above-board app that uses the Uber API and has developer info on file with Apple and Google, anonymously develop a tool for jailbroken phones that injects itself into the Uber app and monitors requests. Instead of building a website that scrapes Amazon centrally, build a browser extension with permissions on amazon.com. And so forth.
The arms-length approach of meta apps helps here, because then individual ride-sharing coops and bookstores get plausible deniability. They're not telling you to use the app, it's a shadowy foreign group who decided to link to them.
- IWeldMelons 8y agoSci-Hub is Kazakhstani creation actually.
- lowry 8y agoWhich enjoys the same level of independance as Saudi Arabia because of its natural riches.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Fins 8y agoIt's Putin's creation to much greater degree than Kazakhstani, Elbakyan is not Kazakh at all, she just happened to be born there.
- IWeldMelons 8y agoYou've never lived there I guess, in the former USSR. Elbakyan is of Armenia ethnicty, who was born in Kazakhstan (hence she is Kazakhtani, not Kazakh). And her native language is Russian, so is the native language of many Kazakh people who lives in the bigger cities of Kazakhstan.
- dtech 8y agoSci-Hub also works because it is convenient. As Netflix and Spotify have shown, convenience trumps morality and to a lesser extent pricing. Users jailbreaking their device and getting a specific app from a non-official/non-preinstalled app store is not convenient.
- karmelapple 8y agoAlso: Napster replaced by iTunes.
- leereeves 8y ago> As Netflix and Spotify have shown, convenience trumps morality I don't understand what you mean. Is there a more moral alternative to Netflix and Spotify? It seems to me that Netflix and Spotify combine convenience and morality (or at least, legality), showing that the combination trumps free (pirated)?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- wz1000 8y ago> Is there a more moral alternative to Netflix and Spotify? Yes. If I had to rank the options in order of morality, they would go like this: Buy DRM free content > Abstain from consuming content > Pirate the content >>> Pay for DRMed content. Supporting DRM means supporting a world where you have to pay rent and seek permission from corporate overlords to use your own devices in the way you wish.
- AnthonBerg 8y agoWhere would “Pirate the content” lie if pirated content had advertising value which in itself led to sales? And what if those sales were DRMed content?
- enjo 8y agoMy moral system is very different. I see no problem (at all) with paying for DRMed content. "Supporting DRM means supporting a world where you have to pay rent and seek permission from corporate overlords to use your own devices in the way you wish" No. It means paying content creators for access to their content on my device. I'm using my device however I like, I just don't get access to the hard work of others on exactly my terms all of the time. And that's ok.