I have a RPi 5 running as a Tailscale exit node in my parent's house in a developing country. The said country does not care much about what people download. qbittorrent-nox makes it very easy to download stuff by just using my browser. Plus, I have access to local, region locked streaming content and very cheap Netflix subscription.
Netflix subscription - Netflix stopped access to streaming for accounts unless you're in the original country of billing. Are you streaming Netflix through your tunnel as well?
This sounds similar to a seedbox, a server rented to do piracy so DMCA complaints and such are sent to your seedbox provider instead of you.
The seedbox providers are typically headquartered somewhere where they can just burn DMCA notices. The servers themselves are also often located in piracy friendly jurisdictions (the Netherlands used to be common, not sure what’s current).
They usually come pre-installed with a remotely accessible torrent client like Deluge, Transmission, etc. Also often includes other software like VPNs, Plex, etc.
You should be relatively safe using one. The server does all the torrenting, you just download the files over FTP so you never appear in the swarm directly. It’s also a huge pain in the ass for law enforcement because it becomes international quickly. You’re in country X, the server with its IP in the swarm is in country Y, and the company that has the rental agreement with the data center for the server is in country Z.
Anecdotally, I used to spend some time in the space and I can’t recall a seed box provider ever getting raided. I think they just generally don’t bother with folks technical enough to go that far; there are easier fish to fry.
It's by the way interesting idea that developing countries entertrainment industries may develop very differently due to internet piracy being already prevalent, though foreign investment may lead to this not happening, IE an "agreement" like TiSA or TTP will mean laws that lead to loss of investments like "no copyright" would become "illegal."
I'd hope someone prepares for that, and when it happens proposes a vote or public address, for laws that make the attempts backfire.
> The servers themselves are also often located in piracy friendly jurisdictions (the Netherlands used to be common, not sure what’s current).
Definitely not piracy friendly jurisdictions most of the time, most are located in Netherlands (most popular), Germany, Canada, United States, Finland and France.
> I used to spend some time in the space and I can’t recall a seed box provider ever getting raided.
Most seedbox providers don't officially allow piracy and don't promote piracy and will listen to valid legal requests, they're safe, you aren't. If they get in legal trouble that involves you, they will totally throw you under the bus to save themselves.
A lot of seedbox providers also don't allow public trackers because that attracts legal notices.
> It’s also a huge pain in the ass for law enforcement because it becomes international quickly. You’re in country X, the server with its IP in the swarm is in country Y, and the company that has the rental agreement with the data center for the server is in country Z.
Actually, it really isn't.
They just don't care as long as the providers stay legal (example: Whatbox (Incorporated in Canada, servers in NL and US) and RapidSeedbox (Incorporated in Hong Kong, servers in NL) started forwarding the legal notices to their users to avoid issues, Ultra.cc (Incorporated in Singapore, servers in NL, CA and Singapore) and Hostingbydesign (Incorporated in Denmark, servers in NL and DE) blocked some trackers to avoid issues)
It's when you stop following the law that you get into trouble, like Hostingbydesign's owner who ran another seedbox provider and got arrested, sentenced and fined when he knew about the piracy and ignored it.
They’re guaranteed to be permanently online as much as such a thing can be for $20/month or whatever. They don’t shut it down if you’re not using it, if that’s what you’re asking but they do occasionally come down for upgrades/migrations/incidents/etc. I’d ballpark most providers in the 99% uptime range.
Some provide root, some don’t. Last I checked, you’ll pay more for root because most of the servers are physical so you have to rent a whole server basically.
The servers are typically IO bound on the NIC so they aren’t super picky about what you do with CPU and memory. They won’t let you run a crypto miner or do heavily parallel transcoding, but if you want to chuck a Python+SQLite web app on there I doubt they’d care.
Depends on the seedbox most will give you root/ssh, others just give you a APi/web interface to a managed torrent client which can be convenient. Check r/seedboxes
How much would you pay for that - compared to existing VPN solutions? You can find cloud hosts or server rentals in Bosnia, Colombia or wherever fairly easily.
You can technically just get any ol' VPS and install the respective/relevant software on it. Just check that the VPS provider doesn't forbid torrenting/etc. in their ToS, I guess :)
I used to do this, but virtually all streaming sites etc block VPS IP ranges now. The beauty of OPs idea is that you get a nice domestic IP instead of one belonging to AWS/GCP/etc.
I've also resorted to putting tailscale exit nodes in foreign relatives homes with Pis in the past.
There are enough weird issues with pretending to be a domestic internet connection from a VPS IP that I've given up trying.
>Just check that the VPS provider doesn't forbid torrenting/etc. in their ToS
They almost always do. But many of them forbid only in tos, and not exactly do something about it
providing such a service (-network) is a popular monetization option for all kinds of useless crapware. this is very useful, but even more shady than regular vpn providers.
Actually in New Zealand getting into trouble for downloading is fairly rare.
The Studios and Music Companies lobbied and got a law passed but the ISPs managed to have the law include a small charge ($20 from memory) for each notice. So the Movie/TV people never bother sending any notices and the music people only rarely do it.
>Does a child's toy, which is supposed to represent a first aid kit, with the red cross on it constitute a misuse?
The important thing about the Red Cross and its brand is that they are neutral. The Genova convention declared they get a special marker, and a rule against harming them in wartime. A US army doctor presumably does not seek out to treat both sides of the conflict, and does not get the special protection the rules of engagement afford to the Red Cross. Nor would some random soldier carrying a J&J first aid kit get any protection. In particular the risk is that the more common that symbol is, the less distinctive it is, a particularly troublesome effect during armed conflict where decisions about where to point a rifle and whether to pull a trigger are being made rapidly.
> Can a random private hospital not use the red cross?
A random hospital definitely cannot, without permission (and presumably, some covenants). And it'd definitely not be an enforceable trademark on their end so not a smart branding move anyways. It's usually not a huge deal -- in the US the hospital sign is blue with a big H. In video games you can just use red background with a white plus (but thats like, the swiss flag) Or in the case of TF2, a red (or blue) cross on a yellow circle.
It would likely help their cause if there were an alternative public domain recognized symbol. The ISO standard is apparently White cross on green background: https://www.iso.org/obp/ui#iso:grs:7010:E003 but pretty much nobody knows that.
> A US army doctor presumably does not seek out to treat both sides of the conflict, and does not get the special protection the rules of engagement afford to the Red Cross.
The protective use of the Red Cross, is subject to the conditions of the Geneva Conventions, and only those rules. What any particular Red Cross organization feels is completely irrelevant. These rules allow use by one side of the conflict's own medics, among other things. There is no treating both sides rule or anything like that.
Protective use of the symbol in an inappropriate context is a war crime. As is ignoring the symbol and firing upon a protected facility.
The Geneva conventions also allow indicative use of the symbols by International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement organizations. It is only supposed to be used by those organizations in this indicative sense, but it is not viewed as a war crime when this is violated.
Using the symbol in a game as a generic symbol for healing or medics is wrong. Use of the the symbol in the protective fashion in video games is arguably fine, as long as the game also treats ignoring the symbol as a war crime. I'm not sure I've ever seen a game where the player gets court marshaled if they fire upon an enemy's medics wearing the red cross symbol though, which is a real problem, and dilutes the meaning of the symbol.
One weird thing here is that for example, the American Red cross licenses the use of the symbol for purposes like first aid kits very much like those found in video games. This is in addition to the well known Johnson and Johnson trademark allowing them to use it on their first aid kits too.
The First Geneva convention article 39 allows the military to order that the symbol be on equipment used by in battle are supposed to have the symbol on it, so they would very much could carry first aid kits with a red cross on it.
The Halo series quietly switched from a red cross to a red H to come into compliance (as the international Red Cross didn't gel their position on the symbol's use in videogames clearly until after the first game was released).
>It would likely help their cause if there were an alternative public domain recognized symbol. The ISO standard is apparently White cross on green background: https://www.iso.org/obp/ui#iso:grs:7010:E003 but pretty much nobody knows that.
FWIW, first aid kits in the UK almost exclusively use that symbol.
Use by organizations other than the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.
The point is to strictly maintain the neutrality of the symbol in wartime and similar situations, as distinct from merely indicating (for example) an army medic of a particular country. If it ends up broadly used just to indicate 'first aid', that purpose is lost.
So, if the Red Cross (organization) is represented in a game, using their symbol is "abuse"? Would it not, rather, actually further their cause; assuming reverence is given in the game as it would be IRL?
Years back I made a circular progress bar library for Android. Nothing special but it was something that was missing at that time. Surprisingly, 1000+ downloads monthly (according to JitPack) and I still get occasional issues reported on GitHub.
Apple India has one of the worst after sales services. If something goes wrong with your device, they'll charge 2.5k (INR) to just look at it and tell you what is wrong with your device.
You have to understand that Apple service in India is outsourced. The sub contractor has no interest in helping you. They only care how they can keep their numbers low.
They charged me $500 to replace the defective keyboard in the Mac Pro 2-3years back within 3 months of purchase and said I put glue on the key which came off.
I have a friend for whose new iphone 10 pro they refused to replace despite servicing the screen thrice and it clearly was manufacturing problem ( they agree) but will not replace the phone only the screen. He spent hours on the phone and no escalation he could do to get them to do it.
Every time i see in Europe or US, the service levels are starkly different, I have got replacement devices in minutes ,it is so bad in India that I and many people I know get their idevices serviced when we vist stateside.
Technically, Project Gutenberg blocks Germany. Anyway this also surprised me last year! Protip: Main PG is blocking DE IPs but mirrors aren't. Unfortunately, [mirrors](https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/81t0ad/project_guten...) don't have the convenient search infra, just the texts. If you can get the ID somehow, then you can navigate to the text in question.
Maybe I missed a more convenient mirror. In which case I'd be really glad for links to convenient mirrors.
Cooool! Exactly what I'm looking for. Actually think I've heard of this before (I follow one of the GH contributors) but realized, just now, it's the mirror I am looking for. Thanks!
(Thomas Mann and Alfred Döblin are out of copyright in the USA, but not in Germany, but obviously there's more to it than that because different countries having different copyright durations is a very normal situation.)
There is nothing more to it: Project Gutenberg distributed books in Germany that are not in the Public Domain there. The rights holder sued. PG was condemned to stop distributing those books in Germany. PG complied by blocking the whole site in Germany.
No country has the same copyright law as USA. In those other countries, Project Gutenberg has not yet been sued. (Edit: and probably in some countries, people downloading from PG would be the only one in illegality, not PG)
For example Alfred Döblin's and Thomas Mann's books are not in the public domain in all of Europe, in most of South America, or in Australia.
No, that book has been in the public domain in Germany since 2015. Since then several annotated editions have been published.
IANAL, but it might be problematic to publish a modern version without any critical commentary as this could be interpreted as "glorifying naziism and the holocaust in public" which is a crime in Germany (§ 130 StGB [1]).
Before 2015 it was not banned in a political sense. The state of Bavaria claimed Hitlers copyright after the war and did not grant any rights to republish it. Ownership or sale of historical editions was always possible.
The project Gutenberg block is by them because they lost a copyright court case in 2018 (which was about ~20 books by 3 authors). See the other comment with a detailed link. They were not required to deny access to the complete site but only to these specific works.
I was diagnosed with high BP very early in my life (23-24 yo). The doctor said it is okay to have everything in moderation but asked me to not touch energy drinks.
I'm pretty sure that if the ship is stuck for a long enough time, conspiracies about it will start popping up and will lead to "alternative facts and truths".
You missed that boat. Already conspiracy theories floating around about the crew intentionally getting it stuck to protest poor conditions for maritime workers
