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Tumblr Blocked Archivists Just Before Starting the NSFW Content Purge (techdirt.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt: By now, of course, you're aware that the Verizon-owned Tumblr (which was bought by Yahoo, which was bought by Verizon and merged into "Oath" with AOL and other no longer relevant properties) has suddenly decided that nothing sexy is allowed on its servers. This took many by surprise because apparently a huge percentage of Tumblr was used by people to post somewhat racy content. Knowing that a bunch of content was about to disappear, the famed Archive Team sprung into action -- as they've done many times in the past. They set out to archive as much of the content on Tumblr that was set to be disappeared down the memory hole as possible... and it turns out that Verizon decided as a final "fuck you" to cut them off. Jason Scott, the mastermind behind the Archive Team announced over the weekend that Verizon appeared to be blocking their IPs. Thankfully, it didn't take long for the Archive Team to get past the blocks. Scott tweeted on Sunday: "why look at that the archiving of tumblr restarted how did that happen must be a bug surely a crack team of activist archivists didn't see an ip block as a small setback and then turned everything up to 11."
Huh? this is the most incomprehensible sentence since "Has Anyone Really Been Far Even as Decided to Use Even Go Want to do Look More Like?". Do I just need mode Covfefe?
OK. In a legal battle between legitimate archival of content, and the laws governing unauthorized computer system access, which one wins?
It is quite clear that Verizon DID NOT authorize the archivists to archive the data prior to the mass purge, as evidenced by the imposition of the IP blocking. As such, there is a strong case to be made that Archive.org was in contravention of the CFAA, and the workaround could be said to be a technical means of circumvention of that restriction of access (and thus, technically 'hacking', even though I REALLY hate to use such a word for such a simple solution.)
It is also quite clear that there is a cultural asset that was going to be removed, purely for PR reasons by Verizon-- which was in need of preservation, and the Archive.org folks acted to accomplish that preservation.
So... Which wins here? Just curious.
You might be surprised how valuable tumblr might be to future historians and anthropologists.
The bullshit, and moronic things that people do with cameras and the like, are a valuable window in the the currently modern era. That it was uncensored, uncurated, and unabashed-- means it is of the MOST value to such future generations of historians-- It is free from the associated biases those practices append.
Technically, the exemption to the DMCA that legitimate archival teams have allows them to violate copyright for the purposes of preservation. Copyright is the authority to impose a terms of use; For the use that Archive.org has, (archival), they are granted an explicit blanket exception--- so, they can basically ignore a terms of use document as long as their reason for doing so lies within their established operations.
However, there do appear to be several grey and unexplored areas, legally speaking, with this action. See below, my semi-serious question.
I don't see a any noteworthy difference between sexual exploitation and non-sexual exploitation. Some people get more upset about sexual issues than about other issues, because sex is still taboo in most societies and thinking about sex in the US is strongly influenced by Puritanism. The exaggerated concern about sexual issues is irrational and in some cases also very hypocritical. There is nothing wrong with sex, there is nothing wrong with masturbating and there is nothing wrong with pornography produced by consenting adult actors. And there is certainly nothing wrong with "female-presenting nipples". Moral outrage about these issues mostly indicates a certain lack of maturity.
Now exploitation, that's a bad thing, or at least it sounds bad to me. We can agree on that. But that's a separate discussion.
In the old days, the internet was built on protocols. "Social media" mostly meant things like Usenet and IRC, and people hosted websites by spinning up an Apache instance that spoke HTTP and would serve their content to anyone who asked. And so there was never that big of a stink about censorship-by-nonprovision-of-services, since anyone could run an IRC server. Communities themselves were responsible for their own infrastructure. Don't like a particular IRC client? Use a different one. Don't like the folks who run a particular IRC server? Run your own.
But now that "I have apache running on a linux box in my basement hosting my blog" has given way to these "services", where communication platforms usually involve a for-profit company running all the infrastructure themselves in an opaque way. Aside from all the other issues that come from a corporate advertising-supported model, people are now learning that you can't trust these companies. The people I know who use tumblr as a primary means of communication are all going "gee, I wonder who else we can trust? We thought we could trust these folks."
But ... this isn't inevitable, and there's no reason that the next big thing in social networking can't be designed as an open protocol, with no central point of control -- a system where people may choose to provide the infrastructure required to power their Facegram or Instabook or whatever themselves, or (more likely) hire someone replaceable to do it for them. Open protocols can't be sold out and can't be owned.
Hardware capability is through the roof now. My smartphone has more storage, more processing power, and more bandwidth than the machines hosting IRC servers not that many years ago. There are no technical barriers to crowd-hosted social media.
people hosted websites by spinning up an Apache instance that spoke HTTP and would serve their content to anyone who asked. And so there was never that big of a stink about censorship-by-nonprovision-of-services
How did people become "anyone who asked" in the first place?
there's no reason that the next big thing in social networking can't be designed as an open protocol, with no central point of control
The IndieWeb community is trying to build a more protocol-centric social web. Each IndieWeb user registers a domain and buys hosting to hold his or her own posts, and IndieWeb sites use Webmention requests (similar to pingbacks) to notify other sites that replies have been posted. Right now, the biggest missing piece of IndieWeb is a recommendation engine to suggest related works by other authors.
Hardware capability is through the roof now.
IPv4 address space, by contrast, is not. Nor is IPv6 routing; I haven't seen evidence that an IPv6-only website can become successful in gaining and keeping readers.
My smartphone has more storage, more processing power, and more bandwidth than the machines hosting IRC servers not that many years ago.
But it's missing one thing: the ability to accept incoming connections on IPv4. Most cellular ISPs put their subscribers behind carrier-grade NAT, as do even home ISPs in some countries. These ISPs give the same public IP address to a whole neighborhood and will refuse to forward inbound port 443 on your neighborhood's IP address to your machine.
It's only a "problem" if you assume that selling your body for sex is somehow worse than selling your body for manual labor (getting paid to dig ditches or run network cables) or selling your intellectual ability
It's not. It's the same thing. In a free society consenting adults can sell whatever they have.
Of course on this site "free society" and "libertarian" are the insults.
I don't respond to or upvote ACs
If this is about improving the working conditions of adult actors, then you can totally count me in. I've been for improved and free health care and social security not just for actors but also for sex workers during all my adult life so far. I also think there should be better mental health care for such professions (and paid leave, if necessary), because this kind of work is stressful.
What I don't get is why consuming porn makes you "greedy" and what makes this "a problem". As I've said, this view is irrational and based on silly old taboos and religious superstitions. Adult actors are mostly in it for money, not for fun, these jobs pay way more than you could ever earn in any low wage job, but also come with a high level of distress and social stigmatization because of silly taboos. So your comparison to low wage jobs is puzzling. Now if your opinion is that it's better if adult actors would work at McDonald's and therefore the working conditions at McDonald's ought to be improved, I'd say, okay, that's an opinion one could have although I still don't see the point of it.
Everybody should get a high enough salary to make a decent living under decent working conditions in any profession, so I'd focus on improving both kind of jobs.