5 ms·

I don't like it either, but I think it's the lesser evil. Consider the fact that you don't even need DNS to put something on the internet; ergo, removing a DNS

I don't like it either, but I think it's the lesser evil. Consider the fact that you don't even need DNS to put something on the internet; ergo, removing a DNS entry only increases the friction to accessing the resource. I think the approach the MPAA is taking is indeed to just make it harder for the 20%, and probably have a realistic understanding that they'll never get to 0 and approach a low asymptote, and have to be satisfied with that. Or, to put it another way, the MPAA is attacking discovery not hosting. Which I think is pretty smart - its good bang for the buck. The people who have legit binaries to share can do so pretty easily (e.g. torrent a linux distro). It would step over the line if they tried to, I don't know, outlaw the bittorrent protocol. But taking down freemoviesXXX.com doesn't exactly raise my hackles.

yarcob 5y ago
Also, making illegal sites slightly harder to visit by blocking certain domains is really a rather mild form of copyright enforcement. I'd much rather have that then companies suing some kid who downloaded a torrent.
- bwoodcock 5y ago
  That's not the point here. The music companies all know that they make way more money on music that gets pirated than music that doesn't; lots of studies have borne that out. The point of this ruling is that it lets them extract money from people who DON'T have a relationship with an infringing party. The neighbor of the kid who downloaded the torrent.
- lugged 5y ago
  That's what they want. If they sued the kids downloading this shit they'd be demolished by society. This way they get what they want and we pay the cost because nobody cares enough.
michaelmrose 5y ago
Taking down freemoviesXXX.com in the court of the nation where it is hosted is materially different from making a DNS provider fail to resolve a valid address hosted elsewhere. If you want to be heard you must both fight for the legal right to host content in one county and the right to be read in every other country. This creates both a concept of there being a censorship list one can be added to and incentivizes escalating attempts to control what can be viewed. DNS is extremely easy to bypass which is really only half the problem. The other half is the complexity of bypassing blocking can trivially be outsourced to devs of sharing apps who can both implement search and DNS or even vpn. Technical barriers that are basically boxes for clients to tick are entirely useless your citizens may manage limited complexity budgets but they can outsource those to developers. The logical path this leads you to are technical and restrictions on what content applications are allowed to display, what applications one is allowed to install based on their compliance with point one, restrictions on what OS one is allowed to install based on compliance with point two. Then you can control ability to access network resources based on compliance with point three. This was all speced out decades ago and the technology embedded in your motherboard and somewhat in play on mobile platforms. Once you have this you will actually have effective censorship tools and now have to worry about how they might be misused when previously we might be reassured by our ability to bypass censorship at need. When you come down to it the entire content producing industry is of only modest value compared to say science and technology and has more resources than it's ever had before and freemoviesxxx.com is little actual threat to it's existence. It mostly prevents useless people without a creative bone in their body who have never contributed to society in any fashion from maximizing their revenue sufficient to afford a second yacht. Twisting consumer tech the necessary gateway for all modern communication and culture to increase their revenue slightly is the tail wagging the dog. Any attempt to take one step down the road ought to result in the offenders being nuked from orbit because their entire destruction would be better end result for society than their success.
jiofih 5y ago
How would you feel about javajosh.com being taken down for linking to unlicensed content at some point in the past? This is a great example of the “first they came for…” scenario.
- javajosh 5y ago
  Its a great example of a slippery slope fallacy. I agree it's troubling, in general, to attack the mechanisms used to commit crime. On those grounds you could legitimately outlaw cars ("get-away vehicles!") the post office ("a conduit for illegal drugs, porn, etc!"), computers, ("an essential tool for hackers!"). I'm just saying, taking down the DNS entry for "obviously" criminal domains doesn't bother me. And yes, when it's not obvious, or worse, is maliciously abused by power to silence dissent, then yes, it's worth being upset about. The slippery slope fallacy is all about extrapolating how power could be abused, leaving the only response to take away power entirely. But that's impossible, because power exists. So let's have an adult conversation about how to use it for the good of all.
  - jiofih 5y ago
    Your argument seems entirely contradictory. If you agree on the slippery slope, blocking at the DNS level is a perfect example of it.

yarcob 5y ago

Also, making illegal sites slightly harder to visit by blocking certain domains is really a rather mild form of copyright enforcement. I'd much rather have that then companies suing some kid who downloaded a torrent.

bwoodcock 5y ago
That's not the point here. The music companies all know that they make way more money on music that gets pirated than music that doesn't; lots of studies have borne that out. The point of this ruling is that it lets them extract money from people who DON'T have a relationship with an infringing party. The neighbor of the kid who downloaded the torrent.
lugged 5y ago
That's what they want. If they sued the kids downloading this shit they'd be demolished by society. This way they get what they want and we pay the cost because nobody cares enough.

michaelmrose 5y ago

Taking down freemoviesXXX.com in the court of the nation where it is hosted is materially different from making a DNS provider fail to resolve a valid address hosted elsewhere. If you want to be heard you must both fight for the legal right to host content in one county and the right to be read in every other country. This creates both a concept of there being a censorship list one can be added to and incentivizes escalating attempts to control what can be viewed. DNS is extremely easy to bypass which is really only half the problem. The other half is the complexity of bypassing blocking can trivially be outsourced to devs of sharing apps who can both implement search and DNS or even vpn. Technical barriers that are basically boxes for clients to tick are entirely useless your citizens may manage limited complexity budgets but they can outsource those to developers. The logical path this leads you to are technical and restrictions on what content applications are allowed to display, what applications one is allowed to install based on their compliance with point one, restrictions on what OS one is allowed to install based on compliance with point two. Then you can control ability to access network resources based on compliance with point three. This was all speced out decades ago and the technology embedded in your motherboard and somewhat in play on mobile platforms. Once you have this you will actually have effective censorship tools and now have to worry about how they might be misused when previously we might be reassured by our ability to bypass censorship at need. When you come down to it the entire content producing industry is of only modest value compared to say science and technology and has more resources than it's ever had before and freemoviesxxx.com is little actual threat to it's existence. It mostly prevents useless people without a creative bone in their body who have never contributed to society in any fashion from maximizing their revenue sufficient to afford a second yacht. Twisting consumer tech the necessary gateway for all modern communication and culture to increase their revenue slightly is the tail wagging the dog. Any attempt to take one step down the road ought to result in the offenders being nuked from orbit because their entire destruction would be better end result for society than their success.

jiofih 5y ago

How would you feel about javajosh.com being taken down for linking to unlicensed content at some point in the past? This is a great example of the “first they came for…” scenario.

javajosh 5y ago
Its a great example of a slippery slope fallacy. I agree it's troubling, in general, to attack the mechanisms used to commit crime. On those grounds you could legitimately outlaw cars ("get-away vehicles!") the post office ("a conduit for illegal drugs, porn, etc!"), computers, ("an essential tool for hackers!"). I'm just saying, taking down the DNS entry for "obviously" criminal domains doesn't bother me. And yes, when it's not obvious, or worse, is maliciously abused by power to silence dissent, then yes, it's worth being upset about. The slippery slope fallacy is all about extrapolating how power could be abused, leaving the only response to take away power entirely. But that's impossible, because power exists. So let's have an adult conversation about how to use it for the good of all.
- jiofih 5y ago
  Your argument seems entirely contradictory. If you agree on the slippery slope, blocking at the DNS level is a perfect example of it.