Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Thursday June 04 2020, @09:56PM   Printer-friendly
from the Project-Gutenberg-sind-nicht-seht-gut? dept.

Project Gutenberg Public Domain Library Blocked in Italy For Copyright Infringement:

Project Gutenberg, a volunteer effort to digitize and archive books, is sometimes described as the world’s oldest digital library.

Founded in 1971, Project Gutenberg‘s archives now stretch to a total of more than 62,000 books, with a focus on titles that entered the public domain after their copyrights expired. The library does carry some and in-copyright books but these are distributed with the express permission of their owners.

The project has an excellent reputation and its work is considered a great contribution to education and culture. However, it now transpires that the site has been rendered inaccessible by ISPs in Italy under the instructions of the Public Prosecutor at the Court of Rome.

[...] The seizure/blocking notice states that all of the targeted domains “distributed, transmitted and disseminated in pdf format, magazines, newspapers and books (property protected by copyright) after having illegally acquired numerous computer files with their content, communicating them to the public, [and] entering them into a system of communication networks.”

[...] “The investigation, conducted by a special unit of the Guardia di Finanza, has been developed in the context of monitoring the targeted Internet networks to combat economic and financial offenses perpetrated online.

“In this context, the operators identified some web resources registered on foreign servers which make content and magazines available to the public early in the morning, allowing users to view or download digital copies,” the court document reads. (translated from Italian)


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by dry on Saturday June 06 2020, @05:24AM (3 children)

    by dry (223) on Saturday June 06 2020, @05:24AM (#1004092) Journal

    It helps that "left" and "right" are really the same thing. Both are authoritarian constructs who demand complete obedience to authority.

    Actually both left and right have non-authoritarian groups, it is just that the authoritarians usually win.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by Unixnut on Saturday June 06 2020, @11:04AM (2 children)

    by Unixnut (5779) on Saturday June 06 2020, @11:04AM (#1004144)

    > Actually both left and right have non-authoritarian groups, it is just that the authoritarians usually win.

    Yes, which makes the modern left/right definitions not really useful.

    The "left"/"right" paradigm came from the time of the French revolution, where those who sided for individual liberty sat on the left, and those who supported authority (the King) sat on the right. So the original definition was very much in the "liberty" vs "authority" division, hence even today the left wing is usually known as the "liberal" side, despite them not being liberal at all really.

    IMO when Karl Marx came up with "Das kapital", that was roughly the period when the left started becoming authoritarian. I place the blame on Communism, because within the stages of Socialism, until reaching the nirvana of Communism, is a stage of "dictatorship of the proletariat", where there is huge authoritarian system designed to destroy the old order, suppress or destroy the old habits (including killing all the people who refuse to accept Communism), and generally usher the final goal of Communism (which is the full decentralisation of power into local "communes", where people vote on local issues and the means of production is shared).

    The problem is no Communist society ever got past the "Dictatorship of the proletariat" phase, because (a) psychopaths always got into positions of dictator, and always dreamt up new reasons that Communism was under threat and the dictatorship must be prolonged to "preserve the revolution". Then (b), any country that would manage to reach Communism, and decentralise, would end up dominated by a larger, centralised authority (even if it includes being invaded by a larger, centrally organised country).

    Centralised systems are more efficient than decentralised systems, we see it even in the internet, where the original "decentralised" system was only maintained due to threat of nuclear war. The moment that threat was no longer important, it started centralising like crazy, to the point where an outage of one company (eg, Amazon with AWS) can take out entire chunks of the web.

    Same happens in human social systems, absent any need to tolerate inefficiency to keep things decentralised, centralised systems win out.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2020, @02:15PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2020, @02:15PM (#1004200)

      Marxist/Communist philosphy is fundamentally flawed and will always devolve into authoritarianism if followed strictly, but many of the concepts have value. The "real communism" that people think of when they say X communist country isn't /real/ communism, is actually anarchy.

    • (Score: 2) by dry on Saturday June 06 2020, @04:23PM

      by dry (223) on Saturday June 06 2020, @04:23PM (#1004222) Journal

      One of the problems is that the left/right scale is too simplistic. The political compass for example adds the non-authoritarian/authoritarian scale to the mix. Last US election for example, https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2016 [politicalcompass.org] shows Hillary slightly to the right of Trump, who has focused on traditional left stuff like supporting labour and protectionism but comes in way more authoritarian.
      The problem with communism is the Stalinist's always show up and being willing to kill etc, usually win against the libertarians.
      Interesting read is George Orwell's experiences in Spain. I think it was published under his real name that slips my memory right now. Basically the socialist revolution was going great and then the Stalinist's showed up. Same with the Russian revolution though that was before Stalin, the authoritarians won out, being better organized and ruthless.
      What I've observed is that in Western Democracies, the left is generally much less authoritarian then the right, whereas in the 3rd world, the left is more authoritarian.
      The other problem is it is all generalizations and people are too complex to put on simple scales.