I don't think it would. The moment the blockchain would start getting any traction, the big blockchain companies would use their capital to get their hands on every recognizable domain name and within days the only remaining "domains" would look like passwords. You could then probably buy readable domains for exorbitant amounts of cryptocoins.
I prefer the current registrar setup over anarchist blockchain hellscapes. You can sue Verisign, you can't sue 0xEf1c6E67703c7BD7107eed8303Fbe6EC2554BF6B.
You know domain sniping already happens right? There is extensive auctioning infrastructure. And most of the good names were claimed a long time ago. The only way to get an existing domain name without paying the owner for it is to sue over trademark violations or stuff like that which often will cost more than just buying it.
Domain sniping already happens, sure. However, squatters need to invest time and energy into registering these domains whereas a cryptographic system can do all that offline inside the data centers of the cryptosquatter.
Some TLDs have provisions against domain squatters and in case of copyright disputes, you can sue the squatters (or request ICANN to release the domain if that isn't possible for some reason). If you have a good reason to demand a domain currently unused, there are ways to get it.
With crypto-TLDs, nike.com and microsoft.com would be registered by a malicious player without any kind of recourse. The lack of enforceability makes the entire system pretty useless the moment it takes off.
> However, squatters need to invest time and energy into registering these domains whereas a cryptographic system...
The auction system is actually fairer since it gives enough time for every party to bid the highest amount according to their interest instead of relying on sniping services like in the current legacy systems.
> whereas a cryptographic system can do all that offline inside the data centers of the cryptosquatter.
what does this even mean?
>Some TLDs have provisions against domain squatters and in case of copyright disputes, you can sue the squatters
Sure, but this is also a double edged sword, since it also opens up abuse i.e. reverse domain hijacking which is a real and common problem. Just this week Charles Schwab tried to rob the legitimate owner of a domain that contained "Schwab", while they tried to hide the fact that the owner's name is also Schwab. [0]
>With crypto-TLDs, nike.com and microsoft.com would be registered by a malicious player
That's why good builders put in the time and effort to reserve these names from the start.
>The lack of enforceability makes the entire system pretty useless the moment it takes off.
Sovereignty has its price. No system is perfect, everything has its trade-offs, but I see a lot of people highlighting the best properties of the legacy system while ignoring the best properties of the new systems. The comparisons should be fair and compare the full range of positives and negatives instead of picking and comparing in a bad faith manner.
There's a simple solution for that: to buy a domain on-chain that has an equivalent off-chain, the existing owner first needs to prove ownership of that equivalent domain. After, it can be sold freely (as uniques could already).
The on-chain contract could be written such that a buyer generates a token, supplied to an on-chain verification oracle that checks token.owned-domain.TLD exists, and if it does grants issuance of the new on-chain version.
This essentially allows for a fair transition from the old system to the new system, while eliminating squatting.
What happens to these domains when the "legacy" domain expires and gets re-bought? Do you lose access when you stop paying? What if someone managed to hack your DNS, does it and its integration with TLS then break the supposed security guarantees?
This system just seems to be traditional DNS with extra steps and a lack of manual recourse against bad actors, to be honest.
The first question is irrelevant and affects nothing - the same owner proves ownership of both at the outset, if they choose to let the legacy version expire, well they chose that - so who cares what happens to it?
I suppose it could be configurable at purchase to allow it to be a recurring verification, if that was desired, but it would seem to overcomplicate for no reason. "Subscribing" to domains each year is legacy inefficiency.
I'm not sure what you mean about DNS, any chain-based system would be... chain-based, and therefore cryptographically-assured that a domain points where the owner chooses. "Not your keys, not your domain" applies.
I don't think that's happened on ENS so far, though there is some domain squatting just like there is on DNS.
Though ENS doesn't implement this, it'd be possible to add paid arbitration by humans for resolving trademark disputes. You couldn't get damages but you could get the domain.
Good points, but I have to point out that what you're describing is literally what happened with our current system, just less extreme.
I was recently quoted $250,000 to buy a .com that is not being used and as far as I can tell has never been used but some guy bought in the 90s when I was a young child. Aside from the level of extreme is that really different from "You could then probably buy readable domains for exorbitant amounts of cryptocoins."
You touch on what I think the core issue is with domains when you talk about suing Verisign. In some very limited cases, it's possible through litigation to get a domain you feel like you should have. But therein lies the crux of the whole issue: What standard needs to be met before you qualify for a domain name, especially one that is in contention?
In cryptocurrency, the criteria to receive the currency was originally solving problems with computing power because they needed some arbitrary measure. In the world of domain names, it's been a lot of different things but mostly just money and time.
That standard - what "qualifies" you to own a domain over someone else I think would have to be decided before truly effective regulation can be made or enforced, blockchain or not. Right now it's basically temporal, with some carveouts from lawsuits for trademarks.
The current regulations around how domain names work is woefully inadequate (like most regulation around technology) and gives outsized power to private entities. This is something that I think people don't talk about enough when they criticize blockchains.
If there was a better job being done with public policy, you'd likely have less people who think a system where there's no way of imposing real regulation is desirable.
It's especially bad with technology. My go to example is Apple's App Store, but this area is a good topic too.
To me, a happy mix of public/private policy would be best. The government allowing private TLDs, but regulating them. An anti squatting law, price capping new TLD name registrations, an enshrined "specificity system" to claiming an unused (or even used) domain would make the situation so much better, but it'll never happen.
There is no traction because it's a vanity item. Most people/businesses need their websites to work on the average Joe/Jane's mobile phone, not just on some specialized browser that only a few people use. (=Chrome, Safari, Edge)
For some products, yes. For example, if you were to make a social media network that targets the general populace for finding their real life friends, it wouldn't work unless you had... well, the general populace on it. No matter how awesome the technology would be. The same with DNS replacements.
The projects mentioned in this thread aren't the first to offer an expanded DNS solution for one reason or another. None of them gained traction.
> For some products, yes. For example, if you were to make a social media network that targets the general populace for finding their real life friends, it wouldn't work unless you had... well, the general populace on it.
Hence why Twitter still has no viable competitor or replacement, especially when the money is still there despite all the hype and mania of it 'dying'.
Certificates are free, and all certificates are surveilled with a cryptographically secure append-only log. Meanwhile, if you think the biggest problem with the DNS infrastructure we have now is rent-seeking, take a look at the blockchain alternatives that have been proposed. There might be no modern analog to "attempting to sell the Brooklyn Bridge" more fitting than blockchain DNS.
What about everyone else after the 100k? What recourse are they left with when their domain is/was taken by another party? Which party should own the domain? How would doubly registered domains be resolved?
They will remain on their original tld, so brand.com will remain brand.com, they just won't automatically receive their own brand tld, unless they manually start the auction themselves.
so those below 100k were not reserved, a squatter bought their brand tld, what recourse do they have? What about new brands that have reached the 100k mark since the great reservation?
if a brand was not significant enough to reach internet search significance why should they be entitled to their own tld? why should be some company "co" from country x be more entitled to their own tld than the company co with the same name from country y?
If they feel they are, they can a) manually start and win the auction b) buy the tld c) use an alternative like .brandHQ,.getbrand,.usebrand or whatever d) just keep using their original domain brand.com, which is the most simple and straight forward solution that requires no effort on their part.
By your logic the evolution of the internet would forever stagnate because developers would be stuck reserving an infinite amount of tlds that keep on popping up, it's just unrealistic and not pragmatic. reserving 100k of the most popular domains is a good faith effort and a pragmatic solution.
And if you want to talk about fairness let's first start talking about the corruption of ICANN[0][1][2] before criticizing emerging solutions.
I'm pretty sure I was asking about edge cases that are hard to deal with so that I might understand how the other party thinks before formulating deeper opinions.
No and that's exactly the problem, we're not on reddit. You asked me a question and I elaborated in a detailed manner to which you responded in a low quality manner with no substance which was just name calling.
>I'm pretty sure I was asking about edge cases that are hard to deal with so that I might understand how the other party thinks before formulating deeper opinions.
I gave several perfectly valid solutions that are pragmatic and realistic, if you don't like them, then you can point them out and explain your reasoning but resorting to hand-wavy rants won't be constructive or helpful for any serious dialogue.
How does the rule in any shape or form contradict what I have stated?
It says: "The domain must not collide with a higher-ranked domain. For example, google.co.uk would lose to google.com. Only the owner of the higher-ranked domain is able to redeem it"
Point is that many developers invested a lot of time and effort into establishing rules for reservation to maximize fairness, so when a domain is not reserved my statement above applies: why would some company co in country x be more entitled to the one in country y? After all the reservation rules have been applied and determined some specific reservation outcome. There are some proposed solutions in that case too, some of which I have outlined before.
>Why should any brand be entitled to such things?
Exactly, but you are the one making a fuss about in the first place.
>Can you quote where I did this? I could for you
I already did, it's your rant directly to my long elaboration to your question. I'm not going to further entertain your flame baits, everybody can see how much effort each of us put into thoughtful responses and can judge accordingly.
Handshake requires domain owners to pay a biennial "mining fee" to maintain their names, even for names that were "airdropped" to FOSS projects. This is no less of a grift than ICANN.
Oh, that's nice of Handshake. Definitely it makes sense to me now that Handshake should be able to sell the domain namespace! Why not, if they're going to donate to FOSS?
My question to you is: if I donate MAC addresses to FOSS projects, can I tokenize ARP? I promise to be nice about it. The first 10,000 IP addresses can have their ARPCoin for free.
Seriously, this FOSS donation thing with Handshake: it's like selling people the Brooklyn Bridge, but promising generous new bike lanes. See, the FOSS stuff? It wasn't the problem with the plan.
Thomas, I’m not sure what you mean when you say that certificates are free. Self-signed certs are free, but only situationally useful in a business context. Let’s Encrypt certs are free, but not usable in all contexts. GoDaddy, Namecheap, and Verisign will still gladly charge $50-$1500 for certs will various features like $50/SAN, and extended validation. If you want to terminate TLS at an AWS managed edge resource, the happy path is ACM. These are “free”, but arguably you’re paying for the cert with the load balancer or edge resource.
There’s no difference between a blockchain and a cryptographically secure write ahead log, indeed that is how blockchains are defined. Perhaps you assumed that I meant cryptocurrency when I said blockchain? I did not.
Certbot isn't the only way to automate Let's Encrypt certificate issuance, and even if it was, you can use hooks to have certbot push certs to other machines.
What’s the use case for OV/EV certs? I thought it was reasonably well established that they herald from the same era as “this site secured by Symantec” icons, and were basically just the same security as DV certs but with the wheels painted chrome and an extra tax for gullible buyers.
It doesn't matter, right? Because anyone who relies on OV/EV certs has chosen to rely on OV/EV certs. If we replaced the whole WebPKI edifice with a blockchain, they'd still make the same decision not to trust the baseline system.
When we talk about the WebPKI being coercively annoying, what we're really talking about are the roots of trust that the browsers have chosen to trust. No browser requires OV/EV.
Yes, a baseline system built on a blockchain could support the validated identity and KYC features of OV/EV certificates. Indeed, this already exists in Sovrin (sovrin.org).
The use case is knowing that a server is owned by who it says it's owned by as validated by a trusted KYC provider. For example, Stripe has an EV cert. Let's Encrypt does not support OV/EV because they cannot automate the KYC checks. Let's Encrypt is focused on the encrypted connection use case.
The “rent-seeking certificate infrastructure” could be solved if web browsers used the DNS (and DNSSEC) to validate certificates. The DNS, on the other hand, is more tricky. If you want human-readable and globally distinct (and stable) names, you have to have a centralized structure to keep track of who has what name. The best we could come up with was the DNS, which is at least hierarchical instead of completely monolithic. And then it becomes a question of: do you want name holders to continually pay for names in some way, or do you want a land grab model where the person who snagged a name 30 years ago now owns it forever for free? With DNS, that question is decided by each node in the tree of the hierarchy.
Human-readable names can potentially be pseudo-random, and thus securely generated. What's hard (indeed, considered largely infeasible) is meaningful, decentralized, secure names.
It is not always about what something is not doing, but rather the unintended (often malicious) use cases it enables without any way to prevent or mitigate.
>Human-readable names can potentially be pseudo-random
No matter how you dice it, getting humans to remember 128 bits of entropy is going to be a non-starter. Encoding those 128 bits using words doesn't really solve the problem.
I was going to argue that remembering "CorrectBatteryHorseStaple.com" is leagues easier than remembering an 128 bit number, but then I did the math and using the 20k most common english words to encode 128bits you'd need an 8 word phrase, which pretty much solidifies the point you've made.
I mean, people can recite poetry far longer, even nonsense poetry ("Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / did gyre and gimble in the wabe") so it's not impossible. But generally speaking, yeah. Nobody wants to navigate to that bit of jabberwocky instead of google.com
It does kind of make me long for the days of the HOSTS file, where anyone might alias a hard-to-remember address as something locally meaningful.
The problem I've got with any signed, cryptographically secure replacement for DNS (including a blockchain-backed solution) is that over time names will be lost. Just like bitcoins get lost.
You need some kind of "admin access" for the system that can fix things like lost keys, at which point you might as well stick with DNS.
I think something that is overlooked in this discussion is the idea that names must be unique. If we relax this constraint, the solution space opens up significantly. I don’t believe uniqueness is a fundamental requirement of a name service because I don’t believe that a human-readable string itself carries sufficient information to be trustworthy in and of itself.
(Sorry for the delayed reply, my account is heavily rate limited, so I don’t get to post more than 5 times per hour and less when someone with high karma like downvotes a post and leaves a comment.)
I wonder if you are just seeing the standard five-minute delay that everyone gets when replying inline in a thread. That delay is indeed intended to discourage too-fast back and forth comments, which sometimes lead to arguments.
If that is what you've encountered, you can bypass the delay by clicking the timestamp of the comment you want to reply to. This opens the comment in its own page with a reply box.
Thanks, but no, I don't think that's what's going on here. What I'm experiencing is 60+ minute rate limits after 5 comments plus maybe 5 edits ("You're posting too fast, please slow down. Thanks."), frequently coinciding with higher karma (15k+) users leaving the first reply and a -1 or -2 downvote balance that usually eventually fights its way back up to +1 or +2. When this happens, I'll try to post every 20 minutes or so to test the boundary. Of course, doing that might be tripping a sliding window, or it might be indeed a stricter rate limit. It's hard to know for sure what's going on. In any case, I don't expect an explanation, if the site is really giving super downvotes to certain users with or without their knowledge, telling people that that's the case would undermine the impact of the approach.
> I think something that is overlooked in this discussion is the idea that names must be unique. If we relax this constraint, the solution space opens up significantly.
Hmm. At some point, a user agent would need to disambiguate between competing identical names somehow (at least for the sort of names that identify global internet resources). Are you assuming the existence of a web-of-trust of some sort as an arbiter?
Well, at some point the end-user will have to make a judgement call about the authenticity of the server they're interacting with, but that is no different from what happens now.
> If you want human-readable and globally distinct (and stable) names, you have to have a centralized structure to keep track of who has what name.
Apps on blockchains already play the role of that centralized structure. The most successful I'm aware of is ENS on Ethereum. Whatever economic model you prefer can be implemented this way.
>land grab model where the person who snagged a name 30 years ago now owns it forever for free?
This is already the case with the current dns, since paying $10 per year is pretty much nothing to any middle class investor, so they do in fact "own" it forever for "free", relatively speaking.
If I had 10 dollars a year from everyone saying this I would be a new FAANG. Why is everything aimed at middle class Americans.. the average salary around the world is a lot smaller and many domains extensions exists which Americans can't buy.
The early adopters got the first twitter names, instagram names, etc for free forever. People invested time signing up when you never thought of it and they get rewarded.. the platform gets the early adopters. We don't force users to pay and let other take the name and continue to be that person.
Domains should be the same. When a domain expires someone can buy it and pretend they are the original owners.
If they were free you could buy coolformatbestnamecoolformat still get the name you wanted and use a prefix postfix custom format to identify with a group. rubycooldomainruby reactcooldomainreact
Anybody involved in a "rent-seeking certificate infrastructure" is doing so by choice. Certificates are free. ISRG saw to that. Web browsers aren't going to use DNSSEC.
They decided they did not want to work with the existing system and the only option was a complete replacement, rather than a dual system. They shot themselves in the foot. On top of that, they guy who ruined freenode took over Handshake and ruined that too. They lost several core developers along the way
You're operating under several incorrect pretenses.
Handshake works with the existing DNS. "The guy who ruined Freenode" had a minor part in the creation of Handshake but does not control it. The core developers of Handshake are still active.
Sorry, but my best friend was one of the core developers who left. I have heard tons of stories that the public has not. Another core dev died. I said several, not all...
Yes, handshake can work alongside, technically, but the leadership did not want to, in practice
"Leadership" should be used extremely loosely. Imagine the first droplets of a puddle. Sure, the water is there but it doesn't dictate the spread. "In practice" is irrelevant to how Handshake is working right now.
I'm not here to convince you of the merits of Handshake, you clearly don't see nor care for it. Just clarifying facts over opinion.
EDIT: FWIW, I don't know who your best friend is but JJ remaining a part of Handshake is a major plus in my book. I personally don't find Andrew Lee (there are two in the Handshake story, we're talking about the Freenode one though) palatable and have clashed with him on occasion. Jackasses exist everywhere but IMHO, good people outnumber them by a massive margin.
That's a good thing, when a project in this space keeps jugging along because a diverse group of keep believing and working, it becomes a testament to the decentralization and value of its core idea.
sorry for the typos, I meant jogging along and diverse group of people. (i.e. diversity through a constant stream of people parting and joining, which is positive because it prevents stagnation and opens up space for new ideas and evolutions)
Register them with cnobin or some other Chinese registrar with an abuse mail that doesn't exist, don't use any TLD owned by Verisign, and you will be able to delay domain seizure for a long amount of time. There's nothing you can do to stop it forever other than keep making more mirrors - see what fmovies and sites like that do.
Complete political non-starter. Might as well argue for the moon to be painted blue. Not only is it a complete waste of time, any effort spent on this is also detrimental to any proposals that actually can be enacted.
Copyrights and patents are very reasonable and necessary frameworks for encouraging and protecting inventors and creators to keep on making things.
The problem, which there is, lies in the execution. Copyright shouldn't last multiple centuries, and patent trolls are a flagrant abuse of the patent system.
> Copyrights and patents are very reasonable and necessary frameworks
No, they are not.
They are moronic. Everything they touch gets worse.
(C)opywrongs and Patents gave us the Opioid Crisis and worse than useless mRNA vaccines.
Public domain has given us 99% of life saving medicines and numbers and binary notation and the theory of relativity and the World Wide Web and SQLite.
>(C)opywrongs and Patents gave us the Opioid Crisis
copyrights isn't even a factor when it comes to drugs, it's primarily patents and regulatory approval. The fact that you casually lump them together suggests that you don't understand what you're even arguing against.
>and worse than useless mRNA vaccines.
Alright I'll bite. Can you elaborate on how they're "worse than useless"? The clinical trials at least show they're pretty effective.
>Public domain has given us 99% of life saving medicines
And how many of those were patented at one point?
>numbers and binary notation and the theory of relativity
not patentable. From wikipedia:
"To be patent eligible subject matter, an invention must meet two criteria. First, it must fall within one of the four statutory categories of acceptable subject matter: process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter. Second, it must not be directed to subject matter encompassing a judicially recognized exception: laws of nature, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas. "
> The fact that you casually lump them together suggests that you don't understand what you're even arguing against.
On the contrary, the fact you don't see how they both are at play suggests the opposite. Patented drugs are always inferior, but the truth has a hard time getting out due to (c)opywrong laws. (https://longbets.org/855/)
> Alright I'll bite. Can you elaborate on how they're "worse than useless"?
>> Public domain has given us 99% of life saving medicines
> And how many of those were patented at one point?
None. Very few of the most critical medicines are modern inventions. And the ones that are patented aren't still made, because you can alway assume the patented version of a drug is the worse version of said drug (a patent encourages stagnasis and disincentivizes shipping an improved, non-patented version). Most life saving medicines were figured out by people far before patents. Humans made it out of the forest and figured out what plants and animal products will sustain you, heal you, and kill you, all without the aid of lawyers nor a patent system. The idea that people wouldn't try to invent new life saving medicines unless they had some bizarre legal system that grants a monopoly is one of the stupidest positions I've ever heard. The incentive is if you invent such a medicine you don't die, or your kids don't die, or your family doesn't die, or your friends don't die. There are no stronger incentives than those.
> not patentable. From wikipedia:
But they were (c)opyrightable. I have an original 1920 first edition copy of Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity and he put it in the public domain.
>On the contrary, the fact you don't see how they both are at play suggests the opposite
Doing a quick skim of the linked article, the basis of argument seems to be:
"copyright laws protecting Purdue from true and damaging information about the dangers of the medication from leaking and spreading"
Which, so far as I can tell has nothing backing it. Do you mind elaborating what specific aspect of copyright law hindered the public from learning about the "dangers of the medication"?
I don't get it. The source you linked is arguing for the opposite (ie. "we conclude that despite several shortcomings, mRNA vaccines have saved many more lives than they cost"). Regardless, neither the the source you linked nor Kirsch's substack contains any evidence, so it's impossible to evaluate either side's claims.
>None. Very few of the most critical medicines are modern inventions. [...]
Ah, so your claim is that if something's gone off patent, then it's in the public domain. I don't object to that characterization, but I have the following follow up questions:
1. going back to your claim of "Public domain has given us 99% of life saving medicines", is it also accurate to say "public domain has given us 99% of life destroying toxins (eg. oxycontin or leaded gas)" since those products have gone off patent and are therefore in the public domain as well?
2. perhaps my original question wasn't clear, but the standard argument for patents is that if it weren't for patents, then the life saving medication wouldn't exist in the first place, or would exist but would be delayed for decades/centuries. Declaring that "Public domain has given us 99% of life saving medicines" after they've been developed under a legal regime with patent protection ignores this.
>But they were (c)opyrightable. I have an original 1920 first edition copy of Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity and he put it in the public domain.
Again, this is a misunderstanding of how copyrights/patents work. The exact manuscript that Einstein wrote might be copyrightable, but the abstract concepts (eg. e=mc^2) were not. Even if Einstein didn't put it into the public domain, he wouldn't be able to hold a monopoly on the theory of relativity, only his specific manuscript discussing it. Likewise, I can write a book about the Theory of Relativity right now and it would get copyright protection, but that doesn't mean I can charge people for using e=mc^2. It just means people can't copy the contents of my book.
>I can write a book about the Theory of Relativity right now and it would get copyright protection, but that doesn't mean I can charge people for using e=mc^2. It just means people can't copy the contents of my book.
Another, simpler way to describe this is: Disney can copyright Mickey Mouse, but Disney can't copyright the concept of an anthropomorphized mouse.
> Again, this is a misunderstanding of how copyrights/patents work. The exact manuscript that Einstein wrote might be copyrightable,
You can assume I know everything about how copyright and patent works. I wrote a book on it in the 2000's. I also was a silent coauthor on many patent applications (for an anti-patent troll group). I agree it wasn't extremely clear that I was referring to this book: https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=Albert+Ein... which I own and I can assure you is in public domain as there are no (c) symbols anywhere, which was a requirement back then (not sure if you knew that?? :P ).
> Which, so far as I can tell has nothing backing it. Do you mind elaborating what specific aspect of copyright law hindered the public from learning about the "dangers of the medication"?
The "media" in this country is controlled and easily bought, because of (c)opyright law which bans most peer 2 peer publishing. Hence, Purdue only has to pay off a few actors to ensure its lies, and not the truth, was the message that got out.
>> Follow this $1M bet for the truth:
> I don't get it.
The debate hasn't happened yet. It's set to happen in February, I believe. It will be the most definitive yet on the net benefit or net harm of the vaccine.
> Ah, so your claim is that if something's gone off patent, then it's in the public domain
My claim is that there are 2 eras in civilization: pre-patent era and post-patent era. Almost all key medicines and inventions in life come from the former era. People never have and never will needs patents to have incentives to innovate. The only group that benefits, are lawyers, who are unable to create value themselves, so have injected themselves as middle men and merely make everything worse for everyone else. Patents are a negative sum game. All they do is destroy economic value and productivity, to deliver revenue to hack lawyers.
>You can assume I know everything about how copyright and patent works. I wrote a book on it in the 2000's.
Sorry, but "I wrote a [unnamed] book on it" doesn't quite cut it for me when it comes to credentialism. I'm going to need some actual sources for your claims about copyright.
>The "media" in this country is controlled and easily bought, because of (c)opyright law which bans most peer 2 peer publishing.
What do you mean by "peer 2 peer publishing"? Information dissemination is easier than ever thanks to the internet.
> Hence, Purdue only has to pay off a few actors to ensure its lies, and not the truth, was the message that got out.
Clearly that didn't work considering that now we all know about it, and according to wikipedia the story was broken by LA times, a traditional media outlet no less.
>My claim is that there are 2 eras in civilization: pre-patent era and post-patent era. Almost all key medicines and inventions in life come from the former era.
I would like to see your methodology on this. Penicillin, for instance was discovered in 1928 which firmly places it in the post-patent era.
I agree that copyright and patents are bad. However, I live in Canada, not in United States.
> I am not positive that if we abolished copyright and patent systems the world would be a better place.
It doesn't, but it would be a good start to abolish copyright/patent laws, I think.
> Just as I'm not positive that if we switch to clean energy the world would be a better place.
Again, it doesn't, but it would be a good start to use clean energy, too. (However, you should still need to not need to use too much energy on things, etc.)
> Section 2. Congress shall make no law abridging the right of the people to publish or peaceably implement ideas.
It look like good to me, but I do not know enough about the U.S. Constitution to judge it properly.
I just wanted to take a moment to say what a lifechanging tool sci-hub has been for research. In doing research for a big writing project on Mars I ended up with a folder of maybe 800 scientific and technical papers, some of them dating back to 1910. This is material it would have been hard to collect even with access to a major university library. Online publishers, meanwhile, demand extortionate per-paper fees for access, including to papers that started in the public domain, or are long out of copyright. On sci-hub you can just find nearly all this stuff without any fuss—there were maybe 5 or 10 papers total that I had to find through other channels. Alexandra Elbakyan is an absolute legend for creating this tool, which is on a par with Wikipedia for usefulness and public benefit.
> Online publishers, meanwhile, demand extortionate per-paper fees for access, including to papers that started in the public domain, or are long out of copyright.
That these online publishers are able to rent collect for papers that are in the public domain, or long out of copyright, is an example of how broken our system is.
It's also an indictment of academic culture that they can't overcome their collective action problem. Of course, the important people in academia largely became that way because of the currency of the brands of the journals they published in. Giving up the fixation on status quo brands probably threatens in some way the power of status quo academics.
edit: academics are who we're supposed to depend on in order to organize and maintain ourselves as post-Enlightenment people, and they're somehow inextricably caught up in such a simple and open swindle. Even fully knowing the real consequences of locking away some stray piece of knowledge from the random asshole who will stumble upon a way to change the world with it.
I think I'm probably HN's most fervent copyright supporter, and I want to find a way to disapprove of Sci-Hub; it feels like cheating? Like sidestepping the real issue, of how journals are organized? But I can't take myself seriously trying to argue that. Even my kids, who are both practicing scientists at institutions with official access to all these papers, use Sci-Hub to get stuff.
At one point I noticed I was grabbing a lot of papers from Astrobiology, and I thought, this is a cool journal, let me go subscribe.
They didn't even have a price list on the site. The only option was to give them your full contact info, and after I did they told me a sales representative would be call me on the phone to discuss pricing. That's the last time I felt any guilt about using Sci-Hub.
I can get access to papers through my university, but even then there are many which lack subscription. And working from home, usually it is faster to just download the paper from sci-hub than go through a university login to get access.
I remember even using sci-hub for some 19th century papers, which are surely in the public domain...
> Online publishers, meanwhile, demand extortionate per-paper fees for access
I just don’t understand how they can be so shameless about it. For instance, one single paper on Phys. Rev. Lett. costs $35 without a subscription. $35 for a few pages of PDF; ~100% margin for the publisher and the publisher alone. (And the publisher here, APS, is not-for-profit.) Who the fuck came up with this kind of pricing?
Lately the fringe theories that we live in a world run by absolutely perverted and demented psychos actively worshipping exploitation and sadism doesn't seem that far out when you start to connect the dots of who's who in the in the highest echelons.
Then they wash themselves with philanthropy and everyone praises them. The masses are easy to steer and have no interest in the esoteric power structures or foreign worldviews of the absolute elite.
Please stop repeating Russian conspiracy theories. Here in the Democratic west we have freedom and meritocracy. Not legal corruption and nepotism. Now please return to the latest woke outrage de jour /s.
In all serious the idea that the West is not profoundly corrupt in its own way is ludicrous.
Were it all went wrong is not clear. I'd say probably the first Gulf War era was an inflection point but not a start.
Perhaps the Kennedy Assassination or the literal defenestration of former Secretary of Defense Forestal.
A domain is just a pointer to a resource, it is not the 'thing' in itself. If they want to take the actual resource offline, they need to find the VPS in question and confiscate that, not the domains.
Another thing, SH used to be accessible as a Tor hidden service, located here[0], which needs a v3 address since the older short .onions are now obsolete. Tor should have been the rightful home of SH since its inception. .Onions/hidden services are more resistant to censorship.
And since the admin has been doxxed, it's too late, unless the project is forked to new (anonymous) owners with good opsec and starts its new home in the dark web, unless it has new owners. I don't know, I don't follow all the latest news on SH.
Little known fact: your Sci-Hub downloads are not private - https://sci-hub.ru/stats has historic access logs with IP addresses, paper identifiers, and timestamps, and plans to publish more logs in the future.
- "To protect the privacy of Sci-Hub users, we agreed that she would first aggregate users’ geographic locations to the nearest city using data from Google Maps; no identifying inter- net protocol (IP) addresses were given to me. (The data set and details on how it was analyzed are freely accessible at http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.q447c.)"
"I can give statistics, as they say, in a hurry, which the Yandex counter collected, according to the number of unique visitors to the site:
from September 5, 2011 to December 31, 2015 - 7.92 million
from January 01, 2016 to December 31, 2018 - 67.5 million
from January 01, 2019 to December 15, 2021 – 119 million"
Source: https://pressunity.org/archives/18381
Sci-hub's offshore host: "DDoS-Guard is a Russian Internet infrastructure company which provides DDoS protection and web hosting services.[1][2] Researchers and journalists have alleged that many of DDoS-Guard's clients are engaged in criminal activity, and investigative reporter Brian Krebs reported in January 2021 that a "vast number" of the websites hosted by DDoS-Guard are "phishing sites and domains tied to cybercrime services or forums online".[3][1] Some of DDoS-Guard's notable clients have included the Palestinian Islamic militant nationalist movement Hamas, American alt-tech social network Parler, and various groups associated with the Russian state.[3][4][1]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDoS-Guard
Sci-Hub
In 2017, a U.S. court ordered all internet infrastructure companies to stop doing business with Sci-Hub, the shadow library which shares scholarly papers without regard to copyright.[22][23] As a result, Sci-Hub switched from Cloudflare to DDoS-Guard for DDoS protection.[23][8] Sci-Hub founder Alexandra Elbakyan says that DDoS-Guard initially contacted her, and that the company volunteered that it works with piracy sites including Rutracker.org.[23] Some experts identify Sci-Hub's use of DDoS-Guard as a security risk given its involvement with the Russian state and that it could monitor Sci-Hub's traffic.[23] Elbakyan says she pays DDoS-Guard about US$1,000 per month (one sixth of Sci-Hub's operating budget), all for DDoS protection; an expert found this amount credible.[23]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDoS-Guard#Sci-Hub
Given how useful scihub obviously is, how could we reasonably make it legal? Is there any chance we could fix the legal system to make scihub officially possible?
A law stating that papers resulting from publicly funded research must be freely redistributable should do the trick. Just a matter of finding the political will.
142 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 191 ms ] threadhttp://sci-hub.ee https://sci-hub.ee https://sci-hub.wf http://sci-hub.wf https://sci-hub.cat
Wikipedia points to https://sci-hub.ru as the official URL, and that site lists all official mirrors as [1]:
sci-hub.se
sci-hub.st
sci-hub.ru
All of which are different from your list. I have no idea personally, I'm just wondering how to know what to use.
[1] https://sci-hub.ru/mirrors
.se was the official, post-seizure Elbakyan suggests .ru.
I prefer the current registrar setup over anarchist blockchain hellscapes. You can sue Verisign, you can't sue 0xEf1c6E67703c7BD7107eed8303Fbe6EC2554BF6B.
Some TLDs have provisions against domain squatters and in case of copyright disputes, you can sue the squatters (or request ICANN to release the domain if that isn't possible for some reason). If you have a good reason to demand a domain currently unused, there are ways to get it.
With crypto-TLDs, nike.com and microsoft.com would be registered by a malicious player without any kind of recourse. The lack of enforceability makes the entire system pretty useless the moment it takes off.
The auction system is actually fairer since it gives enough time for every party to bid the highest amount according to their interest instead of relying on sniping services like in the current legacy systems.
> whereas a cryptographic system can do all that offline inside the data centers of the cryptosquatter.
what does this even mean?
>Some TLDs have provisions against domain squatters and in case of copyright disputes, you can sue the squatters
Sure, but this is also a double edged sword, since it also opens up abuse i.e. reverse domain hijacking which is a real and common problem. Just this week Charles Schwab tried to rob the legitimate owner of a domain that contained "Schwab", while they tried to hide the fact that the owner's name is also Schwab. [0]
>With crypto-TLDs, nike.com and microsoft.com would be registered by a malicious player
That's why good builders put in the time and effort to reserve these names from the start.
>The lack of enforceability makes the entire system pretty useless the moment it takes off.
Sovereignty has its price. No system is perfect, everything has its trade-offs, but I see a lot of people highlighting the best properties of the legacy system while ignoring the best properties of the new systems. The comparisons should be fair and compare the full range of positives and negatives instead of picking and comparing in a bad faith manner.
[0] https://domainnamewire.com/2023/01/24/charles-schwab-tries-t...
The on-chain contract could be written such that a buyer generates a token, supplied to an on-chain verification oracle that checks token.owned-domain.TLD exists, and if it does grants issuance of the new on-chain version.
This essentially allows for a fair transition from the old system to the new system, while eliminating squatting.
This system just seems to be traditional DNS with extra steps and a lack of manual recourse against bad actors, to be honest.
I suppose it could be configurable at purchase to allow it to be a recurring verification, if that was desired, but it would seem to overcomplicate for no reason. "Subscribing" to domains each year is legacy inefficiency.
I'm not sure what you mean about DNS, any chain-based system would be... chain-based, and therefore cryptographically-assured that a domain points where the owner chooses. "Not your keys, not your domain" applies.
Though ENS doesn't implement this, it'd be possible to add paid arbitration by humans for resolving trademark disputes. You couldn't get damages but you could get the domain.
I was recently quoted $250,000 to buy a .com that is not being used and as far as I can tell has never been used but some guy bought in the 90s when I was a young child. Aside from the level of extreme is that really different from "You could then probably buy readable domains for exorbitant amounts of cryptocoins."
You touch on what I think the core issue is with domains when you talk about suing Verisign. In some very limited cases, it's possible through litigation to get a domain you feel like you should have. But therein lies the crux of the whole issue: What standard needs to be met before you qualify for a domain name, especially one that is in contention?
In cryptocurrency, the criteria to receive the currency was originally solving problems with computing power because they needed some arbitrary measure. In the world of domain names, it's been a lot of different things but mostly just money and time.
That standard - what "qualifies" you to own a domain over someone else I think would have to be decided before truly effective regulation can be made or enforced, blockchain or not. Right now it's basically temporal, with some carveouts from lawsuits for trademarks.
The current regulations around how domain names work is woefully inadequate (like most regulation around technology) and gives outsized power to private entities. This is something that I think people don't talk about enough when they criticize blockchains.
If there was a better job being done with public policy, you'd likely have less people who think a system where there's no way of imposing real regulation is desirable.
It's especially bad with technology. My go to example is Apple's App Store, but this area is a good topic too.
To me, a happy mix of public/private policy would be best. The government allowing private TLDs, but regulating them. An anti squatting law, price capping new TLD name registrations, an enshrined "specificity system" to claiming an unused (or even used) domain would make the situation so much better, but it'll never happen.
There's Handshake, ENS, and UnstoppableDomains.
Brave supports .eth domains out-of-the-box, hopefully Handshake soon.
For Handshake you can use a local resolver that reads the blockchain or use NextDNS.
NFTs aren't just for art, y'know. They have real [digital] world use cases for ownership, like DNS.
And Brave and NextDNS aren't popular enough for your threshold?
Handshake is exactly what would stop the issue happening in TFA, yet everyone ignores it here.
For something to go mainstream, you have to talk about it...
HN is not a very good tech site if you only talk about the tech that the common person already knows about.
The projects mentioned in this thread aren't the first to offer an expanded DNS solution for one reason or another. None of them gained traction.
Hence why Twitter still has no viable competitor or replacement, especially when the money is still there despite all the hype and mania of it 'dying'.
Handshake reserved the top 100,000 Alexa domains and allowed all trademark name holders to claim theirs.
Not to mention the ten million in FOSS grants for developers to build tooling
Sadly the ideologues will somehow decry their attempts for an alternative while defending the indefensible ICAAN.
By your logic the evolution of the internet would forever stagnate because developers would be stuck reserving an infinite amount of tlds that keep on popping up, it's just unrealistic and not pragmatic. reserving 100k of the most popular domains is a good faith effort and a pragmatic solution.
And if you want to talk about fairness let's first start talking about the corruption of ICANN[0][1][2] before criticizing emerging solutions.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/21/icann-int...
[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/09/website-domain-more...
[2] https://circleid.com/posts/20210413-insult-and-injury-of-us-...
I'm pretty sure I was asking about edge cases that are hard to deal with so that I might understand how the other party thinks before formulating deeper opinions.
Are you seeing straw men where there are none?
No and that's exactly the problem, we're not on reddit. You asked me a question and I elaborated in a detailed manner to which you responded in a low quality manner with no substance which was just name calling.
>I'm pretty sure I was asking about edge cases that are hard to deal with so that I might understand how the other party thinks before formulating deeper opinions.
I gave several perfectly valid solutions that are pragmatic and realistic, if you don't like them, then you can point them out and explain your reasoning but resorting to hand-wavy rants won't be constructive or helpful for any serious dialogue.
Because in some cases, that is the rule. See Rule #5 https://github.com/handshake-org/hs-names
> if a brand was not significant enough to reach internet search significance why should they be entitled to their own tld?
Why should any brand be entitled to such things?
> but resorting to hand-wavy rants won't be constructive or helpful for any serious dialogue.
Can you quote where I did this? I could for you
How does the rule in any shape or form contradict what I have stated? It says: "The domain must not collide with a higher-ranked domain. For example, google.co.uk would lose to google.com. Only the owner of the higher-ranked domain is able to redeem it"
Point is that many developers invested a lot of time and effort into establishing rules for reservation to maximize fairness, so when a domain is not reserved my statement above applies: why would some company co in country x be more entitled to the one in country y? After all the reservation rules have been applied and determined some specific reservation outcome. There are some proposed solutions in that case too, some of which I have outlined before.
>Why should any brand be entitled to such things?
Exactly, but you are the one making a fuss about in the first place.
>Can you quote where I did this? I could for you
I already did, it's your rant directly to my long elaboration to your question. I'm not going to further entertain your flame baits, everybody can see how much effort each of us put into thoughtful responses and can judge accordingly.
>> Exactly, but you are the one making a fuss about in the first place.
Does this mean you believe there should not have been any reservations?
How are we to believe anything you have written is in good faith?
Can you explain my thinking and where it is inconsistent?
My question to you is: if I donate MAC addresses to FOSS projects, can I tokenize ARP? I promise to be nice about it. The first 10,000 IP addresses can have their ARPCoin for free.
Seriously, this FOSS donation thing with Handshake: it's like selling people the Brooklyn Bridge, but promising generous new bike lanes. See, the FOSS stuff? It wasn't the problem with the plan.
There’s no difference between a blockchain and a cryptographically secure write ahead log, indeed that is how blockchains are defined. Perhaps you assumed that I meant cryptocurrency when I said blockchain? I did not.
(Sorry for the delayed reply.)
When we talk about the WebPKI being coercively annoying, what we're really talking about are the roots of trust that the browsers have chosen to trust. No browser requires OV/EV.
It wasn't designed to replace DNS, but there are an increasing number of people using it for that.
and also - there may be a way for the naming contract to use social recovery for keys.
No matter how you dice it, getting humans to remember 128 bits of entropy is going to be a non-starter. Encoding those 128 bits using words doesn't really solve the problem.
I mean, people can recite poetry far longer, even nonsense poetry ("Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / did gyre and gimble in the wabe") so it's not impossible. But generally speaking, yeah. Nobody wants to navigate to that bit of jabberwocky instead of google.com
It does kind of make me long for the days of the HOSTS file, where anyone might alias a hard-to-remember address as something locally meaningful.
http://web.archive.org/web/20210118172102/https://squaretria...
You need some kind of "admin access" for the system that can fix things like lost keys, at which point you might as well stick with DNS.
aaronsw proposed that you could expire unrenewed names after 12 months
i forget what solution namecoin and ens use
(Sorry for the delayed reply, my account is heavily rate limited, so I don’t get to post more than 5 times per hour and less when someone with high karma like downvotes a post and leaves a comment.)
If that is what you've encountered, you can bypass the delay by clicking the timestamp of the comment you want to reply to. This opens the comment in its own page with a reply box.
Hmm. At some point, a user agent would need to disambiguate between competing identical names somehow (at least for the sort of names that identify global internet resources). Are you assuming the existence of a web-of-trust of some sort as an arbiter?
Apps on blockchains already play the role of that centralized structure. The most successful I'm aware of is ENS on Ethereum. Whatever economic model you prefer can be implemented this way.
This is already the case with the current dns, since paying $10 per year is pretty much nothing to any middle class investor, so they do in fact "own" it forever for "free", relatively speaking.
The early adopters got the first twitter names, instagram names, etc for free forever. People invested time signing up when you never thought of it and they get rewarded.. the platform gets the early adopters. We don't force users to pay and let other take the name and continue to be that person.
Domains should be the same. When a domain expires someone can buy it and pretend they are the original owners.
If they were free you could buy coolformatbestnamecoolformat still get the name you wanted and use a prefix postfix custom format to identify with a group. rubycooldomainruby reactcooldomainreact
https://www.namecoin.org/
Microsoft can get away with it, we might as well do the same
https://blog.neuenet.com/post/why-get-a-tld
Handshake works with the existing DNS. "The guy who ruined Freenode" had a minor part in the creation of Handshake but does not control it. The core developers of Handshake are still active.
Yes, handshake can work alongside, technically, but the leadership did not want to, in practice
I'm not here to convince you of the merits of Handshake, you clearly don't see nor care for it. Just clarifying facts over opinion.
EDIT: FWIW, I don't know who your best friend is but JJ remaining a part of Handshake is a major plus in my book. I personally don't find Andrew Lee (there are two in the Handshake story, we're talking about the Freenode one though) palatable and have clashed with him on occasion. Jackasses exist everywhere but IMHO, good people outnumber them by a massive margin.
The problem, which there is, lies in the execution. Copyright shouldn't last multiple centuries, and patent trolls are a flagrant abuse of the patent system.
No, they are not.
They are moronic. Everything they touch gets worse.
(C)opywrongs and Patents gave us the Opioid Crisis and worse than useless mRNA vaccines.
Public domain has given us 99% of life saving medicines and numbers and binary notation and the theory of relativity and the World Wide Web and SQLite.
copyrights isn't even a factor when it comes to drugs, it's primarily patents and regulatory approval. The fact that you casually lump them together suggests that you don't understand what you're even arguing against.
>and worse than useless mRNA vaccines.
Alright I'll bite. Can you elaborate on how they're "worse than useless"? The clinical trials at least show they're pretty effective.
>Public domain has given us 99% of life saving medicines
And how many of those were patented at one point?
>numbers and binary notation and the theory of relativity
not patentable. From wikipedia:
"To be patent eligible subject matter, an invention must meet two criteria. First, it must fall within one of the four statutory categories of acceptable subject matter: process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter. Second, it must not be directed to subject matter encompassing a judicially recognized exception: laws of nature, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas. "
On the contrary, the fact you don't see how they both are at play suggests the opposite. Patented drugs are always inferior, but the truth has a hard time getting out due to (c)opywrong laws. (https://longbets.org/855/)
> Alright I'll bite. Can you elaborate on how they're "worse than useless"?
Follow this $1M bet for the truth: https://blog.rootclaim.com/rootclaim-accepts-500000-challeng...
>> Public domain has given us 99% of life saving medicines > And how many of those were patented at one point?
None. Very few of the most critical medicines are modern inventions. And the ones that are patented aren't still made, because you can alway assume the patented version of a drug is the worse version of said drug (a patent encourages stagnasis and disincentivizes shipping an improved, non-patented version). Most life saving medicines were figured out by people far before patents. Humans made it out of the forest and figured out what plants and animal products will sustain you, heal you, and kill you, all without the aid of lawyers nor a patent system. The idea that people wouldn't try to invent new life saving medicines unless they had some bizarre legal system that grants a monopoly is one of the stupidest positions I've ever heard. The incentive is if you invent such a medicine you don't die, or your kids don't die, or your family doesn't die, or your friends don't die. There are no stronger incentives than those.
> not patentable. From wikipedia:
But they were (c)opyrightable. I have an original 1920 first edition copy of Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity and he put it in the public domain.
Doing a quick skim of the linked article, the basis of argument seems to be:
"copyright laws protecting Purdue from true and damaging information about the dangers of the medication from leaking and spreading"
Which, so far as I can tell has nothing backing it. Do you mind elaborating what specific aspect of copyright law hindered the public from learning about the "dangers of the medication"?
>Follow this $1M bet for the truth: https://blog.rootclaim.com/rootclaim-accepts-500000-challeng...
I don't get it. The source you linked is arguing for the opposite (ie. "we conclude that despite several shortcomings, mRNA vaccines have saved many more lives than they cost"). Regardless, neither the the source you linked nor Kirsch's substack contains any evidence, so it's impossible to evaluate either side's claims.
>None. Very few of the most critical medicines are modern inventions. [...]
Ah, so your claim is that if something's gone off patent, then it's in the public domain. I don't object to that characterization, but I have the following follow up questions:
1. going back to your claim of "Public domain has given us 99% of life saving medicines", is it also accurate to say "public domain has given us 99% of life destroying toxins (eg. oxycontin or leaded gas)" since those products have gone off patent and are therefore in the public domain as well?
2. perhaps my original question wasn't clear, but the standard argument for patents is that if it weren't for patents, then the life saving medication wouldn't exist in the first place, or would exist but would be delayed for decades/centuries. Declaring that "Public domain has given us 99% of life saving medicines" after they've been developed under a legal regime with patent protection ignores this.
>But they were (c)opyrightable. I have an original 1920 first edition copy of Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity and he put it in the public domain.
Again, this is a misunderstanding of how copyrights/patents work. The exact manuscript that Einstein wrote might be copyrightable, but the abstract concepts (eg. e=mc^2) were not. Even if Einstein didn't put it into the public domain, he wouldn't be able to hold a monopoly on the theory of relativity, only his specific manuscript discussing it. Likewise, I can write a book about the Theory of Relativity right now and it would get copyright protection, but that doesn't mean I can charge people for using e=mc^2. It just means people can't copy the contents of my book.
Another, simpler way to describe this is: Disney can copyright Mickey Mouse, but Disney can't copyright the concept of an anthropomorphized mouse.
You can assume I know everything about how copyright and patent works. I wrote a book on it in the 2000's. I also was a silent coauthor on many patent applications (for an anti-patent troll group). I agree it wasn't extremely clear that I was referring to this book: https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=Albert+Ein... which I own and I can assure you is in public domain as there are no (c) symbols anywhere, which was a requirement back then (not sure if you knew that?? :P ).
> Which, so far as I can tell has nothing backing it. Do you mind elaborating what specific aspect of copyright law hindered the public from learning about the "dangers of the medication"?
The "media" in this country is controlled and easily bought, because of (c)opyright law which bans most peer 2 peer publishing. Hence, Purdue only has to pay off a few actors to ensure its lies, and not the truth, was the message that got out.
>> Follow this $1M bet for the truth:
> I don't get it.
The debate hasn't happened yet. It's set to happen in February, I believe. It will be the most definitive yet on the net benefit or net harm of the vaccine.
> Ah, so your claim is that if something's gone off patent, then it's in the public domain
My claim is that there are 2 eras in civilization: pre-patent era and post-patent era. Almost all key medicines and inventions in life come from the former era. People never have and never will needs patents to have incentives to innovate. The only group that benefits, are lawyers, who are unable to create value themselves, so have injected themselves as middle men and merely make everything worse for everyone else. Patents are a negative sum game. All they do is destroy economic value and productivity, to deliver revenue to hack lawyers.
Sorry, but "I wrote a [unnamed] book on it" doesn't quite cut it for me when it comes to credentialism. I'm going to need some actual sources for your claims about copyright.
>The "media" in this country is controlled and easily bought, because of (c)opyright law which bans most peer 2 peer publishing.
What do you mean by "peer 2 peer publishing"? Information dissemination is easier than ever thanks to the internet.
> Hence, Purdue only has to pay off a few actors to ensure its lies, and not the truth, was the message that got out.
Clearly that didn't work considering that now we all know about it, and according to wikipedia the story was broken by LA times, a traditional media outlet no less.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purdue_Pharma#Controversy
>My claim is that there are 2 eras in civilization: pre-patent era and post-patent era. Almost all key medicines and inventions in life come from the former era.
I would like to see your methodology on this. Penicillin, for instance was discovered in 1928 which firmly places it in the post-patent era.
> I am not positive that if we abolished copyright and patent systems the world would be a better place.
It doesn't, but it would be a good start to abolish copyright/patent laws, I think.
> Just as I'm not positive that if we switch to clean energy the world would be a better place.
Again, it doesn't, but it would be a good start to use clean energy, too. (However, you should still need to not need to use too much energy on things, etc.)
> Section 2. Congress shall make no law abridging the right of the people to publish or peaceably implement ideas.
It look like good to me, but I do not know enough about the U.S. Constitution to judge it properly.
That these online publishers are able to rent collect for papers that are in the public domain, or long out of copyright, is an example of how broken our system is.
edit: academics are who we're supposed to depend on in order to organize and maintain ourselves as post-Enlightenment people, and they're somehow inextricably caught up in such a simple and open swindle. Even fully knowing the real consequences of locking away some stray piece of knowledge from the random asshole who will stumble upon a way to change the world with it.
Yar.
They didn't even have a price list on the site. The only option was to give them your full contact info, and after I did they told me a sales representative would be call me on the phone to discuss pricing. That's the last time I felt any guilt about using Sci-Hub.
I remember even using sci-hub for some 19th century papers, which are surely in the public domain...
I just don’t understand how they can be so shameless about it. For instance, one single paper on Phys. Rev. Lett. costs $35 without a subscription. $35 for a few pages of PDF; ~100% margin for the publisher and the publisher alone. (And the publisher here, APS, is not-for-profit.) Who the fuck came up with this kind of pricing?
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-b...
Then they wash themselves with philanthropy and everyone praises them. The masses are easy to steer and have no interest in the esoteric power structures or foreign worldviews of the absolute elite.
In all serious the idea that the West is not profoundly corrupt in its own way is ludicrous.
Were it all went wrong is not clear. I'd say probably the first Gulf War era was an inflection point but not a start.
Perhaps the Kennedy Assassination or the literal defenestration of former Secretary of Defense Forestal.
Another thing, SH used to be accessible as a Tor hidden service, located here[0], which needs a v3 address since the older short .onions are now obsolete. Tor should have been the rightful home of SH since its inception. .Onions/hidden services are more resistant to censorship.
And since the admin has been doxxed, it's too late, unless the project is forked to new (anonymous) owners with good opsec and starts its new home in the dark web, unless it has new owners. I don't know, I don't follow all the latest news on SH.
[0] http://scihub22266oqcxt.onion/
- "To protect the privacy of Sci-Hub users, we agreed that she would first aggregate users’ geographic locations to the nearest city using data from Google Maps; no identifying inter- net protocol (IP) addresses were given to me. (The data set and details on how it was analyzed are freely accessible at http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.q447c.)"
https://sci-hub.ru/10.1126/science.352.6285.508 ("Bohannon, J. (2016). Who’s downloading pirated [sic] papers? Everyone. Science, 352(6285), 508–512")
Sci-hub's offshore host: "DDoS-Guard is a Russian Internet infrastructure company which provides DDoS protection and web hosting services.[1][2] Researchers and journalists have alleged that many of DDoS-Guard's clients are engaged in criminal activity, and investigative reporter Brian Krebs reported in January 2021 that a "vast number" of the websites hosted by DDoS-Guard are "phishing sites and domains tied to cybercrime services or forums online".[3][1] Some of DDoS-Guard's notable clients have included the Palestinian Islamic militant nationalist movement Hamas, American alt-tech social network Parler, and various groups associated with the Russian state.[3][4][1]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDoS-Guard
Sci-Hub In 2017, a U.S. court ordered all internet infrastructure companies to stop doing business with Sci-Hub, the shadow library which shares scholarly papers without regard to copyright.[22][23] As a result, Sci-Hub switched from Cloudflare to DDoS-Guard for DDoS protection.[23][8] Sci-Hub founder Alexandra Elbakyan says that DDoS-Guard initially contacted her, and that the company volunteered that it works with piracy sites including Rutracker.org.[23] Some experts identify Sci-Hub's use of DDoS-Guard as a security risk given its involvement with the Russian state and that it could monitor Sci-Hub's traffic.[23] Elbakyan says she pays DDoS-Guard about US$1,000 per month (one sixth of Sci-Hub's operating budget), all for DDoS protection; an expert found this amount credible.[23] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDoS-Guard#Sci-Hub
I've got no direct use but every time it comes up I have a think just in case I know anyone it would be useful for.
Ta for the reminders!
https://www.reddit.com/r/scihub/comments/lofj0r/announcement...
Hmm I guess they don't want to get accidentally DoS attacked
https://handshake.org/
https://www.ilovephd.com/working-sci-hub-proxy-links-updated...