3 ms·

mmm, in many cases these residential proxies are media boxes, and they consent as much as anyone else consents to what amazon, or google or facebook does; it's

mmm, in many cases these residential proxies are media boxes, and they consent as much as anyone else consents to what amazon, or google or facebook does; it's buried somewhere in the recesses of the TOS. The question is more about why the US and others can't properly enforce the bullshit all this amounts to.

bell-cot 4mo ago
"He who has the gold makes the rules" is older than the pyramids.
SR2Z 4mo ago
Because this isn't clearly against the law, nor should it be. If websites want to ban based on IP address lots of innocent users get caught in the cross-fire. I'm not sure what the solution would look like - maybe Cloudflare's payment required for requests beyond a certain limit? But I think that the world needs user freedoms now more than ever.
mschuster91 4mo ago
> The question is more about why the US and others can't properly enforce the bullshit all this amounts to. It would cost too much money, either for police to raid all the physical shops and ebay sellers selling dodgy IPTV boxes, or for ISPs to hire enough competent support staff to monitor and respond to abuse@ email addresses and follow through.
TurdF3rguson 4mo ago
What exactly should be illegal here? Scraping websites? AI agents? Not following robots.txt?
- aorth 4mo ago
  The excessive scraping and ignoring robots.txt only breaks the informal social contract established over the past decades of the open internet. The real problem is the companies offering money to developers if they include unrelated SDKs in their calculator or flashlight (for example) applications. Those SDKs add functionality to incorporate those devices into a network that can be used for scraping. The traffic is little, but is distributed over millions of residential devices all over the world, making it difficult to categorize or block. That should be illegal, and that's what Google et al can be expected to be policing on their app stores.
  - inigyou 4mo ago
    On what grounds would it be illegal though? Things don't become illegal just because you don't like them. They may become illegal just because the president doesn't like them, but I don't think you're him, and in the absence of that, there has to be a majority of Congress and most of them want a reason.
    - robinsonb5 4mo ago
      Because they don't have the informed consent* of the owner of the device wich ends up running the code? * no, small print in a click-through agreement doesn't count.
      - inigyou 4mo ago
        It's not illegal to run code on a device without informed consent to everything the code does. The CFAA may be excessively broad but it isn't that broad.
      - TurdF3rguson 4mo ago
        I think they do actually. It's pretty clear from the consent screen that they're doing what they're doing.
        zeratax 4mo ago
        ask any of the people who installed it if they understand what they're doing and especially what the consequences of that are. i doubt you could get a dozen people who do of the millions and millions who installed it.

bell-cot 4mo ago

"He who has the gold makes the rules" is older than the pyramids.

SR2Z 4mo ago

Because this isn't clearly against the law, nor should it be. If websites want to ban based on IP address lots of innocent users get caught in the cross-fire. I'm not sure what the solution would look like - maybe Cloudflare's payment required for requests beyond a certain limit? But I think that the world needs user freedoms now more than ever.

mschuster91 4mo ago

> The question is more about why the US and others can't properly enforce the bullshit all this amounts to. It would cost too much money, either for police to raid all the physical shops and ebay sellers selling dodgy IPTV boxes, or for ISPs to hire enough competent support staff to monitor and respond to abuse@ email addresses and follow through.

TurdF3rguson 4mo ago

What exactly should be illegal here? Scraping websites? AI agents? Not following robots.txt?

aorth 4mo ago
The excessive scraping and ignoring robots.txt only breaks the informal social contract established over the past decades of the open internet. The real problem is the companies offering money to developers if they include unrelated SDKs in their calculator or flashlight (for example) applications. Those SDKs add functionality to incorporate those devices into a network that can be used for scraping. The traffic is little, but is distributed over millions of residential devices all over the world, making it difficult to categorize or block. That should be illegal, and that's what Google et al can be expected to be policing on their app stores.
- inigyou 4mo ago
  On what grounds would it be illegal though? Things don't become illegal just because you don't like them. They may become illegal just because the president doesn't like them, but I don't think you're him, and in the absence of that, there has to be a majority of Congress and most of them want a reason.
  - robinsonb5 4mo ago
    Because they don't have the informed consent* of the owner of the device wich ends up running the code? * no, small print in a click-through agreement doesn't count.
    - inigyou 4mo ago
      It's not illegal to run code on a device without informed consent to everything the code does. The CFAA may be excessively broad but it isn't that broad.
    - TurdF3rguson 4mo ago
      I think they do actually. It's pretty clear from the consent screen that they're doing what they're doing.
      - zeratax 4mo ago
        ask any of the people who installed it if they understand what they're doing and especially what the consequences of that are. i doubt you could get a dozen people who do of the millions and millions who installed it.