Keeping our cultural memory intact

cerement@slrpnk.net to

Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ@lemmy.dbzer0.com – 433 points – 2 weeks ago

https://social.hails.org/@hailey/113081760374774478

from the replies:

“Piracy already has a definition, and I don't have a boat. Now it's just independent archiving.”
If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing

Just a PSA: VPN and cover your ass as you pirate.

PSA = Pirate Service Announcement?

That should be a mandatory phrase for all pirate communities.

Ideally use a VPN with port forwarding (like AirVPN ~~or Mullvad~~) so you can properly seed :)

Mullvad hasn't had port forwarding for like a year or more?

https://mullvad.net/en/blog/removing-the-support-for-forwarded-ports

ProtonVPN also has port-forwarding.

That being said, last time I tried it, their Linux GUI was abysmal, though I hear they recently did a revamp. I haven't used it though yet so I can't speak on it beyond that.

Just something to keep mind.

Idk about the original GUI but its still not great on Linux. That said it does work.

im not even sure the gui worked on my system lmao, i just used their cli version

Oh, I didn't realise (I don't use it). Thanks for the info.

I see airvpn ... I say. It's great!

And make sure you set it up right to do so

My dumb ass left VPN_AUTO_PORT_FORWARD set as "Tru" in my docker-compose and apparently that made the image assume I MEANT "false" so it was randomizing my port and not matching the VPN to it

Fixed that stupid typo and suddenly I can seed! I. Can. FIGHT!

My country doesn't care (Slovenia) and many others don't care either

inb4: The Internet Archive took a dumb decision

yeah we know that they went too much against the powers that be. That was stupid, they could have lived to fight another day, but still, if you're a pirate you must know their actions were ethically correct.

Its hard to justify stealing entertainment. Most arguments are centered around the fact the artist usually makes almost nothing so you aren't even paying them for it.

It isn't theft, it's copyright infringement. Otherwise known as a bullshit crime that corporations invented to force the state to protect their bottom line. An individual infringing on a corporations copyright is, at worst, neutral. The artists working on these movies, games, albums, etc are either salaried, contracted, or having the majority of their profits siphoned off from their publisher. If you really care about supporting artists, throw independent artists a few bucks where you can and "steal" to your hearts content from the companies that already exploit their creative workforce.

Honestly, I wish pirating measurably hurt corporations bottom lines. They need to go down and that would be the easiest way to do it. But decades of rampant piracy have shown that piracy actually helps these companies in most instances, as people who have pirated a product and like it are more likely to purchase the product in the future compared to someone who simply hasn't used the product in question.

Additionally, many smaller or independent creators either don't give a shit about piracy or actively encourage those without the means to pay to pirate it anyway. People who are doing it for the love of their craft aren't profit centered ghouls who only care about enriching themselves and create things to contribute to our shared culture and entertainment. Pull your head out of your ass

Well you did just state my first point in more words, so yes I agree, since artists aren't getting paid in most cases anyways, stealing their work is sort of morally grey, but mostly because its not their work anymore.

But thats not true across the board, and its impossible to know which companies are the ones that do treat their employees well enough that it would affect them to steal it.

So why don't we maybe repair that bond between an artist and their work so that it makes sense not to steal art from people again? Copyright could be changed to do this couldn't it?

Copyright makes sense to protect creativity to an extent, until we figure out some other way artists can make a living.

Corps make BILLIONS thanks to copyright. It's not protecting creativity, real creators don't get that money.
I agree that work has to paid, but this is ridiculous.

🏴‍☠️ pirate brazenly, fuck yeah 🏴‍☠️

FYI, there are multiple methods to download "digitally loaned" books off IA, the guides exist on reddit. The public domain stuff is safe, but the stuff that is still under copyright yet unavailable by other means (Libgen/Anna's Archive, or even normal physical copies) should definitely be ripped and uploaded to LG.

The method I use, which results in best images, is to "loan" the book, zoom in to load the highest resolution, and then leaf through the book. Periodically extract the full images from your browser cache (with e.g. MZCacheView). This should probably be automatised, but I'm yet to find a method, other than making e.g. an Autohotkey script. When you have everything downloaded, the images can be easily modified (if the book doesn't have coloured illustrations IMO it is ideal to convert all images to black-and-white 2-bit PNG), and bundled up into a PDF with a PDF editor (I use X-Change Editor; I also like doing OCR, adding the bookmarks/outline, and adding special page numbering if needed - but that stuff can take a while and just makes the file easier to handle, it's not necessary). Then the book can be uploaded to proper pirate sites and hopefully live on freely forever. Also there are some other methods you can find online, on reddit, etc.

Since the publishers are also trying to suppress out-of-print media, abandonware and public domain material (also fair use) and the courts are favoring the publishers over the good of the public, we know it's no longer about promoting science and useful arts or building a robust public domain.

The companies and courts alike are breaking the social contract, hence the trmporary monopolies enstated by the agencies of the same state are invalid. Piracy is no longer a valid crime since the state licenses are no longer valid.

(They will still enforce the will of the state — ICE does a lot of raids to enforce commercial interests when it's not massacring refugees— but that doesn't legitimize the will of the state. It only shows they are willing tyrants glad to use violence to oppress.)

We have nothing to lose but our chains!