Article's author explains: "Unfortunately Alexa doesn’t have intelligence on the amount of visitors for this site." He goes on to describe additional data from informer.com, similarweb.com, etc - and to explain that the site actually strives not to be ranked well - as part of their business model.
You do realize that if it's in top 10 million, out of estimated ~640 million websites, it's right at the top? It's not misleading at all, it's quite down to the point, just like the article itself.
Alexa is generally a poor metric. In my experience directly comparing Google Analytics to Alexa for hundreds of sites, anything above 50k rank is not pushing meaningful traffic.
Below excerpt sums up the "most visited websites" part. Notice the "s" at the end of "websites". It might be an overstatement, the author didn't back it up, unless I missed it, but it's impressive nontheless:
> 45 domain names are in active use in 19 different countries.
> 42 dedicated servers in Germany run the whole operation.
> 24,3 million PDF and PowerPoint files are hosted on all sites combined.
> These sites have at least 12.843 incoming links.
> 23 to 29 million unique monthly visitors for all the sites combined.
> Estimated 100 million page views per month.
> The sites generate a roughly estimated add revenue of $92,210 each month.
> slideplayer.com is ranked as the 6,047 and myshared.ru is ranked as 11,806 most visited site in the world. 11 other sites are also ranked in the top 100,000 list.
> According to another source, a public address book at locatefamily.com, someone under the name Vladimir S. Nesterenko is living at [REDACTED] in Moscow. Vladimir lives according to Google Streetview it’s an apartment complex far away from the Moscow city center...
Really? Someone investigating with journalists, and may be considered a journalists themselves (?), actually publishes the address of someone that they are accusing of running a scam?
There can only be two reasons for doing something like that:
a) You're an idiot, and didn't consider the implications.
b) You're asking for the public to exact a justice that you think you can't.
The site in question (locatefamily.com) is known for scraping public information. I'm very doubtful anyone did anything wrong here, tough it is questionable data to say the least.
Morally questionable maybe, though I'm going full circle and going to say scamming is as well.
edit: The name was posted in public whois info. That basically means you handed out your data to the public anyway. Everyone on this forum would be able to acquire the location from the information he found.
It’s amazing how many people don’t know how to use whois. Most doxxing I’ve witnessed comes from public info. The linking together of this info and promoting it is what creates more danger.
Since I assume most swatters are 12 year olds, that means they are less likely to know that Whois exists, therefore more likely to have the info because this author posted it.
I completely agree with you on that. So it remains more questionable than good, though I do not think the '12 year old swatters' will click beyond the main article (from last year's rtl.nl website which did not contain info if i remember correctly) and go to the more detailed page described in OP.
That's not a justification at all.
Just to give you an example: UK company addresses are open to the public, and easily accessible through the government website. Many UK internet personalities have set up a company, and for many of them it's their house address (cause either they don't know about the register or they don't care enough).
Would it be ok for me to make a blog post with their home address on it, just because it's publicly available? I don't think so, even if they did something scammy.
Original text removed as I already stated below it was wrong but people keep complaining.
Apparently it is illegal since the start of this year (in the Netherlands, as it is where the article is from) since may 2018 as the new AVG went into effect and it is considered personal data which requires approval for publishing.
> I'm going to post a comment that will get down voted immediately
... because it is wrong.
> but yes. Unless you are exiting violence or defamation is your goal.
What other goals would you have though? To cause embarrassment or inconvenience would count as harassment or bullying which are not legal in most jurisdictions.
What good reasons can you think of for publishing an individuals address without their permission?
It being able to be found elsewhere adequate justification: if it is that easy to find then what is your reason for republishing?
With regard to your edit (that happened while I was typing), legal concerns aside are there any morally justifiable reasons that spring to mind?
It's extremely likely that this person isn't responsible for the website, or knows anything about it. Criminal or shady activities in Russia (and everywhere else) are often laundered through cutouts.
You can find an example of this in "Magnitsky act: behind the scenes" where Bill Browder allegedly laundered his corporate holdings for tax fraud through various handicapped people, and eventually gangsters who were conveniently murdered.
However, their point stands true: in exUSSR climate, registering a dummy entity through an ignorant proxy is an easy and common way to run a shady business, and sometimes even a legit one. It's entirely unnecessary to bring Magnitsky's deal as an example, but this method is well known and practiced since perestroika. It's safe to assume the person in question was a proxy, and that further investigation is needed.
Oh, that's for sure, it's just that pointing at this particular hit piece is not the most convincing argument. Otherwise, it's entirely correct that business climate in Russia is far from transparent.
Ahem. The maker of that documentary is anti-Putin to the extent he supports the theory that Putin blew up some Russian apartment buildings to start a war.
Browder, on the other hand, is actively surpressing the documentary; even if none of the things said about him in the documentary are true (in which case you'd think he would sue the guy who made it for libel; a guy who lives in the UK), that's pretty shady.
Pussy Riot is anti-Putin and they are still based in Russia. Same can be said about everyone in Russia who voted against Putin in the most recent election. You don't have to live outside of Russia to be anti-Putin.
fighting it gives it attention and validity, its the streisand effect. And Julian Assange lives in the UK but was still a tool of the kremlin's propaganda wing. what's your point?
That's... an interesting interpretation of Magnitsky's murder. (regardless of whether Browder himself was involved in any shady dealings). They, and supporting citations, also come from only one source, too.
No argument on the doxxing side, but I wasn't talking about Assange. We were talking about the "behind the scenes" movie, and the maker of the film might have been a Putin critic at some point, but is no more than a clown now. His Twitter feed is quite delicious, complete with claims that Russian press is freer than Western, and with adoring comments from people with English-sounding names, but written in such a stilted and obviously translated word for word from Russian language that one could do another HN post how Twitter's claim to have banned Russian bots is nothing but self-serving bunk.
So, I'm supposed to believe some anon's interpretation of this documentary... apparently based on his subjective analysis of some guy's twitter feed... over my own lying eyes?
How do you explain the Russian documents on Browders website that say ... what Nekrasov says, and NOT what Browder says? It's a pretty simple fact check; you don't even need to speak Russian to do it. I did it, and it appears that Nekrasov was honest and Browder is the deceptive lunatic who wants to start WW-3 over his tax bill. Hey, I could be wrong: on the other hand, I'm providing citations and you, an anon, are providing opinions as to the political content of someone's twitter feed.
Oh, you can believe anything you want, including, from your many posts, that Putin is a nice guy.
I do read Russian, though, and can read Nekrasov's (not "some guy") twitter feed. HYe might as well be working for RT or Sputnik, and deserves exactly as much credibility as those fine news sources. They also want one to believe that evil Browder wants to start a war. Right...
Lol, OK browderbot. Obviously I am a Kremlin functionary for not being a lemming. Only those who believe what some billionaire's PR firm tells them are non-Putin slaves.
Unlike you, I post under my real name. And I will say again: whatever your worthless anon view of Nekrasov's twitter feed might be, his documentary appears to be true in all the details I checked. Including the important ones of who Magnitsky was and what he was doing in Russia.
Not to do anything to violate HN's rules, and you certainly are free to believe what you want, or what you need, but in this particular matter I will take an opinion of someone who doesn't even speak Russian, and does not care to look at any of the primary sources with a great grain of salt.
Don't think publicizing information against the US presidential candidates makes somebody "a tool of the Kremlin's propaganda wing". Or have you drank too much laughable American propaganda yourself?
If this were a criminal enterprise I'd agree with you, but I can imagine any of us putting together a document scraping/resource website and not having any qualms about it.
It's pretty cheap to buy the obfuscation service when you register domains, he probably did not have a lot of money when he started.
""Magnitsky act: behind the scenes" where Bill Browder allegedly laundered his corporate holdings for tax fraud through various handicapped people, and eventually gangsters who were conveniently murdered."
Look, I'm not saying that's a bullshit documentary, but that's literally the kind of smear campaign Putin would execute to try to get talks of the magnitsky act thrown out. I wouldn't take any of that information as factual.
My spot checks indicate it was 10/10 on the money, not that this has anything to do with the subject on this thread. Just because some anon on the internet is giving me 'friendly advice' to not take any of the information as factual because Putin might like it (or because it makes Browder sad).... Why are you even bringing this up?
That's a good attitude comrade. Congratulations on earning an additional 10 points to your social credit score! Now you can enjoy the 2nd class cabin on our country's numerous, punctual, and well maintained trains. Keep up your outstanding and patriotic attitude and you'll be riding in the luxurious and stylish 1st class cabins in no time!
Probably not, but there's a big difference between information being drowned in the midst of other information, and carefully pruned information from that pile and then put into an article whose sole purpose is to draw attention to it.
Regardless, it's a very poor decision made by the author to reveal it in such a way, with maps, etc.
There's no telling whether or not that's his real name.
Edit: as a commenter below pointed out, just because a person with a name lives at an address, they may not run a website that they're listed as running. After all you probably live at an address, and if I was a fraudster I could list you.
Except that if you read the article the reporters confirmed that a guy by that name lived at that apartment complex by asking the neighbors. There’s no guarantee that the person who registered is actually the person who lives there but someone answers to that name at the address provided apparently.
Again, I wouldn’t be so sure. It’s a useful practice to use real people’s info for precisely situations like this.
Step 1) register foo.com
Step 2) make email address John.doe@foo.com
Step 3) register bar.com using John.doe@foo.com as contact info. Include contact info for John Doe with a real address and random phone number
This meets Whois requirements and makes it a bit harder for any real lookups. It’s easier than providing wholly fake info because journalists will Lee dogging. When journalists contact John Doe who denies owning bar.com then they will work it like an uncooperative subject.
"Because registration data connects individuals or organizations with domain names, domain name registrants are required to provide accurate and reliable contact details. If the domain name registrant knowingly provides inaccurate information, fails to update information within seven days of any change, or does not respond within 15 days to an inquiry about accuracy, the domain name may be suspended or cancelled."
- ICANN (https://whois.icann.org/en/primer#field-section-3)
"Organized" usually implies a, well, organization. This seems like it may be just one guy. I don't see anything about this site that would particularly require an "organization".
Scraping, mostly no. Using them to make profit: yes. Since you then violate the copyright of the author as the original action was solely to make it public (assuming no profit was intended).
edit: Rehosting is not allowed as far as I know in Dutch law if you are attempting to make profit of it by not requesting it from the original owner. Rehosting it and not taking advantage and linking to the original article is allowed as far as I know. But maybe ask your lawyer for info if you really want to know.
If a file is available through non-auth http it’s unclear what the copyright is. I think it depends on the particular item whether copyright was violated.
Making a file public without restriction doesn’t mean another can’t make profit (my ISP makes a profit by transmitting the file to me; gmail makes profit when I email the file to me; google makes a profit when they cache the file; archive makes a profit when they archive a file; etc etc).
I think if this were non-public docs then the case is clearer. But by releasing a document publicly with unlimited access via URL the author explicitly allows unlimited distribution (and due to the nature of tcp/ip redistribution). If an author wants to restrict distribution then they should restrict distribution using available protocols.
Since the article contained some private Dutch governmental documents, I think you are correct to state the last case (some non-public). Though if the are public, reselling them (or making profit as a side business) without referring to the original document is problematic at best, illegal at worst. There are plenty of sites who reference or even quote published documents from the overheid.nl (goverment) websites and make profit from them, but not by copying them without reference. Though they all serve some legitimate purpose and you can actually download them instead of having to click though quizzes and other annoying things in the hope you will click one advertisement.
> If a file is available through non-auth http it’s unclear what the copyright is.
Protocol has nothing to do with copyright. “Non-auth http” doesn't suddenly make copyright murky.
> But by releasing a document publicly with unlimited access via URL the author explicitly allows unlimited distribution (and due to the nature of tcp/ip redistribution).
There is an implicit license to exactly the redistribution necessary to effect access by URL, sure, but this is not “unlimited distribution”.
Republishing is, particularly, not what is licensed.
There is no implicit licence. This is an oft-circulated but fallacious rationalization made by computer people that is not in line with the law.
The law does not recognize any such thing, and until the turn of the 21st century this was a recognized hole. Technically, the World Wide Web (and indeed other systems from FidoNet to SMTP) was a violation of many countries' copyright laws. Legislators fixed the hole, but not by introducing the idea of implicit licencing.
The EU introduced provisions in 2001, by way of a Directive, that the making of temporary transient copies for the likes of HTTP and other network transmission mechanisms to work was explicitly not copyright violation in the first place. This became Netherlands law in 2004, and U.K. law in 2003. Neither the Directive nor the implementing Acts and Instruments talk about licensing. It is simply not a violation of copyright by definition.
> There is no implicit license. This is an oft-circulated but fallacious rationalization
There is implicit copyright, I assume that’s what the parent comment was referring to. In the US, it is automatically illegal to copy something and redistribute it under copyright law [1]. The same is true in the EU [2]. While copyrights are not licenses, the parent comment is correct in the sense that one does not have a license to distribute copied content until one is granted that license explicitly by the copyright holder.
> There is no implicit licence. This is an oft-circulated but fallacious rationalization made by computer people that is not in line with the law.
> The law does not recognize any such thing
Okay, so you said it three times, but it doesn't make it true. Implied license is a real legal doctrine in both the general law of licenses and copyright in particular, at least in the US.
The law concerned, in this case of a (purportedly) Russian citizen using EU-located servers to serve WWW pages to people in the EU, is not U.S. law. You have made this further error twice, now.
> If a file is available through non-auth http it’s unclear what the copyright is.
No. Everything that is copyrightable is either under copyright or the copyright has expired. There are no copyrightable works that are neither. What you can do with a file on "non-auth HTTP" depends on what rights the copyright holder grants you. Making it available implies you are allowed to read it. Doesn't imply you're allowed to copy it, print it, sell it, make money with it, ...
People are selfish and wish to capitalize on the viral nature of reuse. So they make up "legal rights" to protect their ability to out gain you even after they're long dead.
I get the impression ATM that copyright infringement is legal as long as nobody complains. When one person complains or files a DMCA takedown notice, no problem, it gets taken down. It needs to be a big company's documents - like Elsevier or (in the Bittorrent era) music publishers - before a major legal action is undertaken to take a site offline.
TL;DR it's not a crime if nobody complains. Now that someone complained though, things might end up badly for the owner.
Around here, some crimes and all civil matters require a complaint but other crimes, such as murder, can be prosecuted without one, on the state's own behalf.
In most places it's not part of criminal law but a civil matter, although the copyright industry has taken steps to change that under the guise of "counterfeiting".
> I get the impression ATM that copyright infringement is legal as long as nobody complains.
Copyright infringement is never legal. Yes, it's often not enforced until someone complains, but there is a difference between enforcement and legality.
> TL;DR it's not a crime if nobody complains.
It is a crime even if nobody complains, you're just not getting caught or reprimanded. It is possible to hurt someone without getting caught. That doesn't make it okay.
Then several infringement cases have to be opened, in each country according to its specific copyright laws. This may drown the author in costs and time spent to fight these claims that he/she may be discouraged and shut the business down. However this orchestrated "attack" would require coordination from the accusing parties. Further the complexity of such cases requires highly educated lawyers educated in law in cyberspace which means that they are expensive. That is why copyright laws cannot be solved easily in a decentralized way, if they are deemed to be a problem of course. I would claim even that there is no economic feasibility in such infringement claims i.e. there's no money to be made in them directly (acquired from the infringing party) and since the documents are public already, they hold implicitly no monetary value, thus even indirectly there is no money to be made there.
Nope, copyrights are automatic in the US and EU and for any countries that adopt the Berne convention. It’s illegal to copy and redistribute something you don’t have explicit license for.
If the site owner is actually a Russian living in Russia - - law enforcement and courts of democratic countries cannot get access to him, Russia does not extradite it's citizens, only Google has the power to stop this (but they obviously have a conflict of interest because like credit card co's and real estate agents and so many others they only make $$$ if the deal goes through).
If you don't have the author's or publisher's permission to republish, you're in breach. That's the entirety of practical crux of copyright law.
In practice, in some cases the authors' intent is for others to republish, especially on the web. So they deliberately don't pursue damages―but they still have the right to do so, and users are still not entitled to anything unless there's a specific broad license. Republishing files en masse stretches this unspoken agreement.
People keep grossly misinterpreting copyright law, because they got used to the share culture on the web. "Fair use" is especially invoked left and right where it doesn't apply. "Public access" is also not a thing in the law (afaik).
I read through the article and I’m baffled. I couldn’t watch the news video or understand what was going on at the bottom of the post... but were news outlets and the government involved for a site that’s skimming PDFs, hosting them and then slapping on ads? This isn’t something new and if I recall correctly SlideShare did the same thing to grow to where they are today. Is it legal, I don’t know, but these types of sites are dime a dozen and nothing new..
From the article: "Multiple tax files of Dutch citizens had been published via www.docplayer.nl"
I don't speak or read Dutch, so I couldn't watch the video clip, but my guess is these tax files contained important and sensitive information. They were probably scraped from a government website.
They probably did, but someone made the mistake to put them somewhere where they were publicly available. Also the "russian" made tools available for taking down the content, tools which according to the article were working in an effective and timely manner.
There are hundreds of "sharing" sites for every kind of thing that you'd want to find on the web, all copycats with the exact same idea. MP3s, tech manuals, etc. They're more popular in developing countries, I guess because we're used to piracy from the 2000s.
The figure of 92 K$/mon is pulled out of thin air, and a person earning that probably wouldn't live in a two-room apt on the outskirts. (Not saying that they found the right guy, though.)
Is this some kind of political prep piece for passing legislation in Europe against google, internet archive, and other search engines indexing public content?
> Of course it is "more useful" to perpetrate than to suffer injustice, but for the sake of the thinking dialogue with myself this utilitarian standpoint has to be given up."
> Natürlich ist es "nützlicher", Unrecht zu tun als Unrecht zu leiden; um des denkenden Dialogs mit mir selbst willen muss gerade dieser Nützlichkeitsstandpunkt aufgegeben werden.
It's a great question, and the true answer isn't necessarily the default the (somewhat) rhetorical question assumes. Personally, an honest life is more important to me than money. OTOH, that's easy to say living on/with a software engineer's salary and job prospects.
This is an important question everyone should ask themselves. Should you be honest or sacrifice it for money? Do you want to sleep well every night? Do you have a moral compass or is it broken already? Should you sell your ethics? You probably have more space to decide than those who struggle surviving the day. You can choose.
Honestly though. I feel like I'm seeing so much grifting these days, from stuff like this, to people charging for faux-lifestyle courses, to (ahem) crypto speculators, plus a bunch of stuff from public figures and politicians. I'm sure a lot of it is not new, but it does make you wonder what the point is.
Its not that easy question to answer anymore. The same can be said for working at or for Google or Facebook etc
For the amount of good Google has done for human beings and Internet, there is equal amount of morally questionable ways they make money. 'Honest work' is such a fluid concept now that the grey area seems okay.
I wonder if this article ended up improving search ranking and revenues for the creator. Another form of automated seo generation I see is youtube users that scrape images and 3rd party news articles then convert them into a video with a slide show and overlayed text to speech. Curious what their ad revenue looks like. I assume a bot does all the work and creates thousands of videos using that approach per day.
IANAL but it seem a good idea to put a copyright notice on all documents. One can hope a site like this doesn't scrape docs with copyright notices, but if they do it anyway wouldn't you have a better case to sue for damages.
The upload buttons of those sites seem to be there mainly to create plausible deniability. If any content creates trouble which cannot be made to easily go away just by taking it down, the site owners can claim they did not upload it themselves and that they don't have any records of who did. Or they could also create fake upload records if they want to stretch things a bit further. In practice, I think it's a very safe bet that 99.999999% of the documents on those sites have been obtained through scraping other sites, and are not user-submitted content.
Unlike most spam websites, this one actually provides a useful and helpful function. The next time I 404 on a PDF I'll be sure to search for it on this site.
Seriously, how long has he been online as an "ethical hacker"? For everyone who has the experience of looking for some texts should know that there are millions of this type of websites out there, the spam farms. Many of these sites don't even have the files (a common tactic is putting the links to your spamsite in a PDF, and name the PDF as some other documents people are looking for but you don't actually have, to disguise your spam as a file, polluting the search result for everyone, bastard!), and are just making the visitors to click ads, or scamming people to enter personal information, to pay for another related service or a premium account, and they can probably make more money. And some other websites are even distributing malicious software.
Meanwhile this website is actually an "honest" one that works for the visitors as advertised! I think it would be great injustice by selectively just enforcing the copyright laws by seizing this individual websites and its income. After all, 30% of the websites on the entire Internet are like this. I don't think the blog post really have a point.
The site is nice. I can search "psychology" view 400 pdfs. Click on one, view the pdf at the top of the browser and with the transcription below. All text of the transcription is google translated when using chrome. It makes me think about how it must be when obtaining financial freedom and just dumping money on viewing whatever you want to read. Except I haven't found a good translator for pdfs, so this transcription is nice on the site. Also most if not all of the Pdfs are not complete and makes me think this site is beneficial to the source publishers.
There's more to it then scraping. I would love a deep dive on how he/she was able to get page rank for the sites. Usually these people employ black hat SEO that works for while, but eventually fails when Google updates their ranking algorithm. I always wondered if there are sites that could game the system indefinably. Exactly the kind of info you don't announce on black hat SEO forums.
Thanks for letting us know about this great "sharing" site :-)
Lot's of garbage in it, but it also has some interesting docs. I'm more interested on the technical details of it. How it works internally for scrapping, text extraction, indexing, random users creation and uploading of stuff and so on.
I understand the privacy and copyright infringement concerns, but it's not like they've hacked into those other sites and uploaded their files. They're using existing and "open for everyone" pages. Also the estimates for revenue are highly exaggerated IMHO. Sure they're making some €€€, but not in the millions range :-)
the internet is full of these types of download sites.
meh.
dude really shouldn't have doxxed him though. we dont even know if the guy in the whois is really the guy behind the site, since you can put anything in there.
The article does not provide evidence that the users are fake (may well be true, but presumption of innocence applies). If they are not fake, and reports of copyright violation to the platform are duly considered, then it would appear to comply with DMCA in much the same way as Youtube or Facebook do - am I wrong?
If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and acts like a duck, then it's probably a duck. But you still need an ornithologist to put that duck in jail. Or something like that.
But wait, earning this money and storing on AdSense account is tricky and there's no such thing like buy bitcoin with adsense balance, right? To be able to withdraw that amount the owner is expected to provide tax information and so on..
This is the real question. He could do it legitimately, as google doesn't really care where your income comes from. Hence the implication of google in this story as a party.
168 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 209 ms ] thread> 45 domain names are in active use in 19 different countries.
> 42 dedicated servers in Germany run the whole operation.
> 24,3 million PDF and PowerPoint files are hosted on all sites combined.
> These sites have at least 12.843 incoming links.
> 23 to 29 million unique monthly visitors for all the sites combined.
> Estimated 100 million page views per month.
> The sites generate a roughly estimated add revenue of $92,210 each month.
> slideplayer.com is ranked as the 6,047 and myshared.ru is ranked as 11,806 most visited site in the world. 11 other sites are also ranked in the top 100,000 list.
Really? Someone investigating with journalists, and may be considered a journalists themselves (?), actually publishes the address of someone that they are accusing of running a scam?
There can only be two reasons for doing something like that:
a) You're an idiot, and didn't consider the implications.
b) You're asking for the public to exact a justice that you think you can't.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/12/30/not-malice/
TL;DR Seems to have been first attributed to 'Napolean' on Usenet in 1997!
Morally questionable maybe, though I'm going full circle and going to say scamming is as well.
edit: The name was posted in public whois info. That basically means you handed out your data to the public anyway. Everyone on this forum would be able to acquire the location from the information he found.
Since I assume most swatters are 12 year olds, that means they are less likely to know that Whois exists, therefore more likely to have the info because this author posted it.
Would it be ok for me to make a blog post with their home address on it, just because it's publicly available? I don't think so, even if they did something scammy.
Apparently it is illegal since the start of this year (in the Netherlands, as it is where the article is from) since may 2018 as the new AVG went into effect and it is considered personal data which requires approval for publishing.
... because it is wrong.
> but yes. Unless you are exiting violence or defamation is your goal.
What other goals would you have though? To cause embarrassment or inconvenience would count as harassment or bullying which are not legal in most jurisdictions.
What good reasons can you think of for publishing an individuals address without their permission?
It being able to be found elsewhere adequate justification: if it is that easy to find then what is your reason for republishing?
With regard to your edit (that happened while I was typing), legal concerns aside are there any morally justifiable reasons that spring to mind?
> About Sijmen Ruwhof Independent IT Security Researcher / Ethical Hacker
I used to be absolutist like that as well as a teenager. It's a shame when some adults don't grow out of it.
If that's the case, how can you argue with someone else's definition of ethics?
You can find an example of this in "Magnitsky act: behind the scenes" where Bill Browder allegedly laundered his corporate holdings for tax fraud through various handicapped people, and eventually gangsters who were conveniently murdered.
Browder, on the other hand, is actively surpressing the documentary; even if none of the things said about him in the documentary are true (in which case you'd think he would sue the guy who made it for libel; a guy who lives in the UK), that's pretty shady.
You can use google translate to read this:
https://www.novayagazeta.ru/articles/2018/10/22/78289-povar-...
TL;DR version: Small time regional bloggers disappear and the "executioners" are then erased themselves.
This is one of the very few newspapers left in Russia which does this kind of investigative journalism, they get death threats regularly.
EDIT: Spelling.
FWIIW Browder was pro-Putin until Putin stopped letting him get away with tax fraud. Citations available: what do you have?
And, I do not get my Browder citations from "one source." I can cite you a bloody youtube video of him talking about what a great guy Putin is.
This still has nothing to do with some poor bastard getting doxxed by a clown who thinks he is Sherlock Holmes.
How do you explain the Russian documents on Browders website that say ... what Nekrasov says, and NOT what Browder says? It's a pretty simple fact check; you don't even need to speak Russian to do it. I did it, and it appears that Nekrasov was honest and Browder is the deceptive lunatic who wants to start WW-3 over his tax bill. Hey, I could be wrong: on the other hand, I'm providing citations and you, an anon, are providing opinions as to the political content of someone's twitter feed.
I do read Russian, though, and can read Nekrasov's (not "some guy") twitter feed. HYe might as well be working for RT or Sputnik, and deserves exactly as much credibility as those fine news sources. They also want one to believe that evil Browder wants to start a war. Right...
Unlike you, I post under my real name. And I will say again: whatever your worthless anon view of Nekrasov's twitter feed might be, his documentary appears to be true in all the details I checked. Including the important ones of who Magnitsky was and what he was doing in Russia.
Look, I'm not saying that's a bullshit documentary, but that's literally the kind of smear campaign Putin would execute to try to get talks of the magnitsky act thrown out. I wouldn't take any of that information as factual.
Sex offenders need to be registered. Heck, I think Panama papers and paradise papers people should be exposed...
Regardless, it's a very poor decision made by the author to reveal it in such a way, with maps, etc.
I applaud Vladimir Nesterenko for making money like this.
Edit: as a commenter below pointed out, just because a person with a name lives at an address, they may not run a website that they're listed as running. After all you probably live at an address, and if I was a fraudster I could list you.
Step 1) register foo.com Step 2) make email address John.doe@foo.com Step 3) register bar.com using John.doe@foo.com as contact info. Include contact info for John Doe with a real address and random phone number
This meets Whois requirements and makes it a bit harder for any real lookups. It’s easier than providing wholly fake info because journalists will Lee dogging. When journalists contact John Doe who denies owning bar.com then they will work it like an uncooperative subject.
Are there any? My street name is literally "private" and my phone number "000..." or something like that.
Report loaded with envy have no place on my list.
Let the Russian live.
If you can reach that files just scraping it means they are somehow open to public access.
No joke, i am genuinely asking.
edit: Rehosting is not allowed as far as I know in Dutch law if you are attempting to make profit of it by not requesting it from the original owner. Rehosting it and not taking advantage and linking to the original article is allowed as far as I know. But maybe ask your lawyer for info if you really want to know.
Making a file public without restriction doesn’t mean another can’t make profit (my ISP makes a profit by transmitting the file to me; gmail makes profit when I email the file to me; google makes a profit when they cache the file; archive makes a profit when they archive a file; etc etc).
I think if this were non-public docs then the case is clearer. But by releasing a document publicly with unlimited access via URL the author explicitly allows unlimited distribution (and due to the nature of tcp/ip redistribution). If an author wants to restrict distribution then they should restrict distribution using available protocols.
* https://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html
Protocol has nothing to do with copyright. “Non-auth http” doesn't suddenly make copyright murky.
> But by releasing a document publicly with unlimited access via URL the author explicitly allows unlimited distribution (and due to the nature of tcp/ip redistribution).
There is an implicit license to exactly the redistribution necessary to effect access by URL, sure, but this is not “unlimited distribution”.
Republishing is, particularly, not what is licensed.
The law does not recognize any such thing, and until the turn of the 21st century this was a recognized hole. Technically, the World Wide Web (and indeed other systems from FidoNet to SMTP) was a violation of many countries' copyright laws. Legislators fixed the hole, but not by introducing the idea of implicit licencing.
The EU introduced provisions in 2001, by way of a Directive, that the making of temporary transient copies for the likes of HTTP and other network transmission mechanisms to work was explicitly not copyright violation in the first place. This became Netherlands law in 2004, and U.K. law in 2003. Neither the Directive nor the implementing Acts and Instruments talk about licensing. It is simply not a violation of copyright by definition.
* https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/ALL/?uri=CELEX:32...
* https://www.ivir.nl/publicaties/download/RIDA2005_206.pdf
* http://wetten.overheid.nl/jci1.3:c:BWBR0001886&hoofdstuk=I&p...
* https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2003/2498/regulation/8/m...
* https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2003/2498/note/made
There is implicit copyright, I assume that’s what the parent comment was referring to. In the US, it is automatically illegal to copy something and redistribute it under copyright law [1]. The same is true in the EU [2]. While copyrights are not licenses, the parent comment is correct in the sense that one does not have a license to distribute copied content until one is granted that license explicitly by the copyright holder.
https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#register
https://euipo.europa.eu/tunnel-web/secure/webdav/guest/docum...
> The law does not recognize any such thing
Okay, so you said it three times, but it doesn't make it true. Implied license is a real legal doctrine in both the general law of licenses and copyright in particular, at least in the US.
See, just for a random case incorporating this doctrine, Effects Associates, Inc. v. Cohen, 908 F.2d 555, 9th. Cir. (1990) https://m.openjurist.org/908/f2d/555/effects-associates-inc-...
No. Everything that is copyrightable is either under copyright or the copyright has expired. There are no copyrightable works that are neither. What you can do with a file on "non-auth HTTP" depends on what rights the copyright holder grants you. Making it available implies you are allowed to read it. Doesn't imply you're allowed to copy it, print it, sell it, make money with it, ...
(The Internet Archive is very careful to skirt the edge of what's permissible and what they can get away with in this regard)
TL;DR it's not a crime if nobody complains. Now that someone complained though, things might end up badly for the owner.
Around here, some crimes and all civil matters require a complaint but other crimes, such as murder, can be prosecuted without one, on the state's own behalf.
Prosecutors can press charges on any case, but customarily don't if the victim isn't willing to cooperate.
Copyright infringement is never legal. Yes, it's often not enforced until someone complains, but there is a difference between enforcement and legality.
> TL;DR it's not a crime if nobody complains.
It is a crime even if nobody complains, you're just not getting caught or reprimanded. It is possible to hurt someone without getting caught. That doesn't make it okay.
Example: https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#register
In practice, in some cases the authors' intent is for others to republish, especially on the web. So they deliberately don't pursue damages―but they still have the right to do so, and users are still not entitled to anything unless there's a specific broad license. Republishing files en masse stretches this unspoken agreement.
People keep grossly misinterpreting copyright law, because they got used to the share culture on the web. "Fair use" is especially invoked left and right where it doesn't apply. "Public access" is also not a thing in the law (afaik).
I don't speak or read Dutch, so I couldn't watch the video clip, but my guess is these tax files contained important and sensitive information. They were probably scraped from a government website.
The figure of 92 K$/mon is pulled out of thin air, and a person earning that probably wouldn't live in a two-room apt on the outskirts. (Not saying that they found the right guy, though.)
> an empire that makes a million dollar a year by illegally hosting 24.3 million files copied from other sites
That's quite an interesting stat: that 24.3 carrots can be thrown on the web, made hard to download, and a dollar can be earned.
> Of course it is "more useful" to perpetrate than to suffer injustice, but for the sake of the thinking dialogue with myself this utilitarian standpoint has to be given up."
> Natürlich ist es "nützlicher", Unrecht zu tun als Unrecht zu leiden; um des denkenden Dialogs mit mir selbst willen muss gerade dieser Nützlichkeitsstandpunkt aufgegeben werden.
-- Hannah Arendt, "Wahrheit und Politik"
In life, son, you have two choices : you work or make money
When we are dishonest in our moneymaking, we are probably creating unnecessary suffering for others. That's enough reason for some.
IMO it also feels easier to love and be loved (e.g. by friends, family, your children, etc.) if you are honest in your dealings with others.
Not if you whip up an aggregator site in a week that makes money on autopilot
Wise words indeed.
For the amount of good Google has done for human beings and Internet, there is equal amount of morally questionable ways they make money. 'Honest work' is such a fluid concept now that the grey area seems okay.
Meanwhile this website is actually an "honest" one that works for the visitors as advertised! I think it would be great injustice by selectively just enforcing the copyright laws by seizing this individual websites and its income. After all, 30% of the websites on the entire Internet are like this. I don't think the blog post really have a point.
Lately google search results are full of such low quality results, computer generated text, etc.
Same applies also to YT - videos with 2x speed, inverted colors etc.
What is this? Can you provide some links to these kind of videos. Thank you.
Lot's of garbage in it, but it also has some interesting docs. I'm more interested on the technical details of it. How it works internally for scrapping, text extraction, indexing, random users creation and uploading of stuff and so on.
I understand the privacy and copyright infringement concerns, but it's not like they've hacked into those other sites and uploaded their files. They're using existing and "open for everyone" pages. Also the estimates for revenue are highly exaggerated IMHO. Sure they're making some €€€, but not in the millions range :-)
On a final note, how is this vastly different from, let's say, https://www.scribd.com ?
meh.
dude really shouldn't have doxxed him though. we dont even know if the guy in the whois is really the guy behind the site, since you can put anything in there.
I see more slideplayer links on my Google search everyday than I see SlideShare.
I always wondered why slideplayer which is a crappy ad galore website has more content than SlideShare. Very interesting post.