I seriously do not understand his problem. I don't like LotR either, but its
cultural impact is huge and it does in no way devalue the gigantic literary
work that Tolkien has created. Idiotic copyright lawsuits won't change reality,
either.
Is this supposed to be a joke? Why in all seven hells would you use a
proprietary, hosted service which brings you zero advantages over a
time-tested, open and simple network protocol which you can extremely easily
host and extend yourself?
>1. People afraid of being tracked down and prosecuted because someone used
their exit node for criminal behavior
Again, Flash Proxy is not an exit node, it's a bridge. It merely helps people
to access the Tor network, and does not relay traffic back out (which, as far
as I know, is not even technically possible). There's zero risks involved.
Also, why are you not running at least a relay, anyways?
>2. People concerned about limiting criminal behavior
Limiting criminal behavior is fine, but never at the cost of essential
liberties and rights. This is inarguable. People rallying against Tor for
"criminal behavior" are the very same people we need Tor to protect ourselves
against.
>3. People who want to stop free speech
I you[1] are such a person, I hate you and you more than deserve to have your
browser turned into a powerful weapon of the very thing you want to stop.
[1] This is the general you, I'm not talking to the parent poster specifically.
It's equally debatable whether it's okay to put stupid advertisements or
tracking technology on your website - which have infinitely less positive
benefits for humanity than Tor.
Anyways, my answer wasn't about Flash-Proxy at all (which is, polemics aside,
indeed debatable). I was pissed about the attitude that Tor == CP, which is a
dishonest fallacy thrown around by supporters of surveillance and spying.
It makes me extremely sad - and somewhat angry - that a lot of people just
associate Tor with CP and criminals. Tor enabled and helped carry out fucking revolutions.
Hundreds, if not thousands of (not only) chinese dissidents use it to
communicate safely. It protects lives. Tor is a blessing upon humanity, and
a big, fat, thorn in the side of every oppressive government on this planet.
The fact that some individuals use Tor for accessing child pornography is sad,
but that constitutes a miniscule amount of its entire traffic. Stop looking
at the few bad apples and look at the big picture.
Oh, and if you're at it, watch Jacob and Roger's talk at the 29c3 as soon as it
is available. They explained this awesome piece of software a bit more in
detail there, amongst all the other amazing projects related to the Tor
Project.
You keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means.
Piracy is not a crime, much less a serious one. Murder, for example, is a
serious crime. Please don't spout nonsense. Copyright infringement is a civil
offense, not even a felony.
That is not to say that what Canonical did - if the accusations are justified -
is ethically sound. But please don't spread the bullshit propaganda of certain
industry representatives.
The bad thing about the "nothing to hide" camp usually isn't their opinion that
they themselves have nothing to hide, but the fact that the majority of these
people seem to want to force this opinion on the rest of society. Fine, live
your rose-colored post-privacy life. But leave me the fuck out of it. I have
things to hide. Everyone has. You included.
>For some people, jobs are hard to come by, I would wager the majority of TSA
screeners do not have any better paying options, so to criticize them for being
a part of a faulty system, or to paint them as being "from a sixth grade
mentality", or "trying to get employed with border patrol asap" when they are
just trying to provide for themselves and their families, who may not have
better options, is pretty unfair.
I don't think so. It's very valid to criticize someone who works for a morally
corrupt, unneeded and socially harmful agency, no matter the reason. Your
argument is basically a sophisticated "but think of the children!!11oneone"
appeal to emotion, ie not a valid argument.
If there aren't any better job options (which I highly doubt), then it's
another gigantic fucking failure of the government that needs to be fixed ASAP.
Your examples only make a legal name important if you consider these things
important. I don't, and they aren't. Part of why we need to get rid of the
concept of a legal name is exactly for this reason. A government has no
business and no authority to decide who I am.
I always wonder during those discussions - what exactly is a "real" name
supposed to be? I don't have "real" name. Rather, I have many chosen names, and
a name my parents gave me. I consider all of these names real, as they refer to
a facet of my personality, a part of me.
I do have a legal name - my birth name. It's but one of many. Why is my legal
name important? It isn't. I don't even consider it my primary name. The
concept of one single "real" name is severely retarded and flies in the face of
reality. We need to get rid of this concept, along with the illusion of a
single identity. I simply am not the same person when I am with my parents,
when I'm with my meatspace friends, or if I'm hanging out on IRC with people I
know pretty well, but have never seen or met. I'm someone different here on HN
than I am on 4chan, or any other message board. That's perfectly human, and no
company or law will ever change that.
>People search on Google -- they opt-in to Google Search -- because the
results satisfy them (more than the competition).
Um, no. A lot of people don't even know there is competition to Google. They
don't "opt-in" to Google just as much as they don't "opt-in" to using Windows,
they've just always used it because it comes with their browser/PC. There's a
reason Google pays Mozilla a few million every year to be the default search
engine.
>I see that a programmer or artist is slightly different because the work
the programmer or artist did can be duplicated.
That's not only "slightly different", that's the crucial difference. So
no, they aren't "effectively the same", they are two completely unrelated
cases. Would people please stop trying to use this dishonest and flat out
false argument to support entirely wrong chains of argumentation?
Besides which, the work an artist/programmer has done is unrelated to the
distribution of the result. If one expects to be paid for the actual work
done, they have to seek other models. One that often comes up here is
Kickstarter, where a form of contract is made - money for work done.
Perfectly fine. Musicians have and always had concerts and merchandise as
their source of income. Comissioned works are also possible, and are a
very valid source of income. Additionally, there's patronage - which is, for
example, basically the way Linus Torvalds makes his money.
I'm positive this list is by far not exhaustive.
So no, pirating something is not taking someone's work time, since their
time and money spend for distribution is effectively zero.
Fuck, people, don't you get this already? There is no n-th result on Google. Don't act like there is.