Skip Navigation

Posts
307
Comments
95
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • Congratulations!

  • I think you're right. I looked up the podcast, and it was coined by Brady Haran. I think I conflated conversations about the role of bootlegging compared to copyright infringement and the development of the term freebooting to mean re-hosting content. It sounds like referencing bootleg recording wasn't part of the original intended nuance of the term.

    I think you're also correct that TomSka's use of the term to include claiming ownership is still a semantic shift.

  • I love TomSka and this video.

    One quibble I have is his use of "freebooting" to mean uploading something and passing it off as your own. Freebooting to me has always meant sharing a work without directly compensating the copyright owners of the work, without the connotation of falsely taking credit for it. The term was invented and popularized by file-sharers whose copyright indifference was frequently termed "stealing" - when it has little in common with theft of a physical object.

    Before file-sharing was popular, bootleg copies of live performances were a normal part of band fan culture, and bands would countenance or even encourage it. Bootleg recordings were never intentionally falsely attributed. Likewise, freebooting compares what file-sharers are doing with the bootleg recording industry; one that is nominally illicit, but complements the artists' reputation and status.

  • Thatz your sharpnez! Thatz your powa!

  • I'm really happy for Eugen's success, and am grateful for his essential contribution to widespread adoption of the ActivityPub protocol, even though I don't agree with him on a lot of things.

    I think it was honest for him to acknowledge Google's role in sidelining the XMPP protocol, and while I don't want to quibble about the other mitigating factors, I do take issue with him comparing the trajectory of ActivityPub with SMTP with the visible adoption and mutually assured destruction of major corporations in maintaining email's nominal interoperability.

    If people haven't read it yet, they should check out (already Fedi-famous for his article on Enshittification) Cory Doctorow's article Dead Letters -- about how it is impossible for even a well-known public figure with access to the best server infrastructure and technical know-how to run a small private email server hosting completely legal content serving nothing resembling spam in the age of Gmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft Outlook. There are several ways that federating with Meta can kill this movement, and ActivityPub becoming the new email is one of them.

    Basically, if we allow Meta, BlueSky, and Twitter to federate, the very network effects Eugen mentions make it more valuable for them to federate with each other than any smaller server. Predictably they will underfund moderation staff who make errors or their faulty algorithms automatically de-federate smaller servers due to false-flagging spam. Small operators will have to work harder and harder until it is basically impossible for them to overcome the error or fix the problem and re-federate. Eventually small groups that aren't directly sponsored by one of the giants will be weeded out, as their users migrate to more reliable services. Even if the disconnections and undelivered messages are not the fault of the sysops, they will be scapegoated, and eventually more and more will throw up their hands and leave the rigged game.

    While having a protocol you championed become the defacto web standard may feel like a great accomplishment, the Fediverse will never be a "Social Web" until the tools we use to communicate are incapable of being taken from us by corporations. Eugen's vision of a social media ecosystem where any small developer can write a platform and have access to the entire ActivityPub network is at odds with his enthusiasm for the emailification of ActivityPub.

    There are social obstacles to building the "Social Web" and as good as the Activity Pub protocol is, the true technical solution is Solidarity.

  • It's crazy how hard Disney has fought to keep Steamboat Willie, an animation based on Steamboat Bill, out of the public domain. Mickey is no longer the exclusive property of The Walt Disney Company.

  • Stating your opinion that you disagree is not the same as debunking. If this has been debunked so frequently, link to the debunking. Repeating a wrong opinion over and over doesn't make it true.

  • It's an instance of Invidious, which does not use ActivityPub. Invidious is software you can host to portal to YouTube while preventing most of google's ability to track and advertise.

  • Someone linked the video in this post but it has since been taken down.

    From my memory I have no idea where the 'children maced' accusations are coming from. A male fascist protected behind a line of police brandished a weapon at antifascists nonviolently protesting, and got a face full of mace in response. It was accurately targeted, and even the police with their backs to the fascists who the stream sprayed past were unaffected. There was a fascist woman who brought her children to protest alongside people sieg heil'ing who harassed the police until they arrested Leif while lying about the context of the action.

  • The original link used another Invidious instance. Yewtu.be is also invidious, hosted in the United States. I think they're both running the same server version.

  • All Copcars Are Ballotboxes!

  • 'The Jews' are not committing war crimes in Gaza, the IDF is. Assigning actions of a related political body to an entire ethnic group is racism.

  • The Arabs want Israel gone and the Jews killed

    I don't appreciate your casual racism.

  • That's correct. @[email protected] discovered and boosted the post, and it snowballed across the Tootiverse. They're all pinging @Five because that's how Mastodon does post replies.