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I use a VPN to watch my local sports team - whose owner is currently in a contract dispute resulting in the team not being played on local tv.


If you hare looking for a more arch experience again, check out endeavouros. Phil and the Manjaro group have increasingly proved their incompetence.


There is funny business going on at manjaro, but by god do they deliver! I run 5 linux computers at home for various ends and I got tired of putting a new Ubuntu on them every now and then. At the time I looked at manjaro, other rolling distros couldn't even survive an update from the latest installation media to current (sidux). Arch is/was a hobby in itself and the opposite of what I was seeking, but it is an excellent foundation. Manjaro has kept these 5 machines for over 5 years through every possible update and it never broke them. Kernel switching is a joy. Driver installing switching is a joy. This is a very tall order.

That said I do hope endeavouros or others can fill Manjaro's immense boots.


Might I suggest Arcolinux to you? It sits closer to Endeavour and Arch with its packages, but also comes with many things preconfigured.


Very interesting read. I’m a checkers man myself but this made me want to crack open a book on the game.


Is there a way to save comments on HN? This is worthy of a save.


There's a "favorite" (sic) link that appears only when viewing the comment-tree rooted at that particular comment. You can get to that view by clicking the timestamp of the comment (obviously). (Or, in this particular case, clicking the "parent" link when viewing the comment-tree rooted at your comment, which is where you might be reading this, from your "threads" link).

These favourites are public and are linked from your user page (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=BRedSox), here (https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=BRedSox)

A surprising number of HNers don't use this feature.


ha ha from the "sic" I can't tell if you object to the verbification of the word or if you're just British. Nice tip though. Had no idea about this feature.


HN saves a list of your upvoted comments which you can view via your profile. This is private.

You can click on the timestamp and it will take you to a page for the comment where you can click 'favourite' which will be public to anyone who visits your profile.

Also, thank you!


you can book mark the comment link, or us HN and favorite the comment.


Tap on the date, click on favourite.


It’s extremely reasonable to be concerned with what goes in your body. It also doesn’t place you in the anti-Vaxxer bin.


> The registered office is located at 92, rue Consolat, 13001 Marseille, France


> We have an ethical responsibility to refuse to work on software that will negatively impact the well-being of other people.

Such as creating a platform for people to listen to music for free by sharing it with others without paying the artist?


Does BitTorrent fall under that? Or YouTube? Plex? Google Drive?


BitTorrent, yes.

YouTube, no. They take down videos with copyrighted material.


So by extension browsers allowing file downloads also falls under that? That's just what BitTorrent is after all.


And knives. They can be used to kill people too.


You can also say it benefits the artist because it makes it easier to listen to them, which incentivises people to give them money to support them. This is more or less the entire model of Bandcamp.


You can indeed say that - and people who demand artists work for "exposure" often do.

But there's no evidence it's factually correct.

And Bandcamp's model is based on selling tracks and albums with free previews, which is entirely different to free listening.


Right, and Bandcamp is probably the most pro-artist of the major music platforms, I would say. The project also benefits the artist but creating an infrastructure not controlled by Youtube or Soundcloud.


Source?


Honest question, how is this legal? It looks as if there is the ability to share your music online. Can someone explain the difference between this and say Napster, Limewire, Kaza, etc?

Rather than storing it locally, it’s just online... or am I missing something here?


For example one of nodes :

  We are are a curated Funkwhale music server promoting libre audio - usually released under Creative Commons licenses and through netlabels.
https://open.audio

So this should answer your question. It's legal because it's not illegal.


Not just that. Sharing access with a friend would fall under fair-use.

I've been meaning to deploy this at my home server, but then with Covid and WFH my need to have it available outside has been reduced dramatically.


Which copyright law are you talking about? My impression is that streaming a reasonably large collection of copyrighted music (say 10,000 tracks) to a reasonable number of friends (say 10) would not be considered fair use by U.S. courts. The RIAA doesn’t sue people for this because it’s hard to detect and the damages are too small to cover legal costs, not because they accept it as fair use.

In the Betamax case, the Supreme Court said that it would not be fair to use copyrighted works in a way which “if it should become widespread … would adversely affect the potential market for the copyrighted work.” Time-shifting was not considered to adversely affect the market for commercial TV. But surely a tool like Funkwhale, “if it should become widespread,” would adversely affect the music streaming industry?


How is this different from the case of a dude with a big CD collection and a copier who tell his friends "bring blank cds and burn copies if you want anything"?

Who would they sue, how would they monitor the usage and how would they enforce anything?

With torrents and big sites it's easy to show who is distributing what and the distribution can be done by anyone.

This is a decentralized tool that can have its access controlled. The only you could get sued is if you have a really shitty friend who goes to court and brings evidence showing you distributed too many songs.


One difference is that blank CDs cost money. In the Betamax case the cost of blank tapes was one reason why time-shifting was not seen as a serious threat to the market that copyright laws are intended to support, because it made it hard to build up a big library. But in any case, I think the RIAA would say that both the CD dude and the Funkwhale dude are infringing copyright, and U.S. courts would agree.

It’s true that enforcement is a practical challenge. However, the developers of the Funkwhale software are probably not as decentralised as the operators of Funkwhale pods. Copyright holders could potentially get future development shut down on the basis that the service implicitly authorises or encourages copyright infringement, as they are trying to do to youtube-dl. The details depend on where the developers live, but this strategy has worked for some tools like Napster, KaZaA, and some BitTorrent trackers, while failing for BitTorrent clients. Which side of the line will Funkwhale fall on?


Sorry, your whole argument smells of FUD.

> One difference is that blank CDs cost money.

So does internet access, electricity to run the servers, disks to store the data. Your point?

> Copyright holders could potentially get future development shut down on the basis that the service implicitly authorises or encourages copyright infringement, as they are trying to do to youtube-dl.

Bullshit. The same argument could be made against a web browser. It's not just because RIAA is making some absurd claim that is yet to be dropped in court that their claims are valid.

Also, even if the RIAA managed to block access to a central point of development, it would be at most a nuisance. Developers of whatever project gets blocked from Github need to do nothing youtube-dl

> this strategy has worked for some tools like Napster, KaZaA, and some BitTorrent trackers. while failing for BitTorrent clients.

Very easy to see how the strategy only works against corporations, not against open source projects. KaZaA got sued, but GnuTella lives on.


My point is that the courts decide what constitutes “fair use,” and based on past decisions, I don’t think they would agree that using Funkwhale to share 10,000 tracks with 10 friends counts. Until a court says otherwise, it’s not FUD, bullshit or absurd to point out that these tools exist in a legal grey area.


And my point is that claiming it to be in a "legal grey area" is the absurd part. Funkwhale is as much of a legal grey area as a web browser and a web server.


From my understanding it's legal for the same reason Apache, nginx, curl, etc. are legal. The software can be used to violate copyright, but that doesn't make the software itself illegal.


Tell that to youtubedl. Embrace for stricter control from copyright groups because they don't like the tools either.


There is music you are allowed to share, e.g. music licenced under some Creative Commons licences. It's up to whoever hosts a Funkwhale instance to ensure that it only hosts legal music, I'd assume.


Lots of confusion in this question. Where do I even start ...

First of all, what do you mean by "this"?

You mention Napster and Limewire. These are things. Things cannot be illegal. Actions can be illegal.

A certain action is illegal if there is a paragraph in the applicable jurisdiction that forbids it.

It might be illegal to manufacture, own, fake, destroy or distribute a thing. But a thing on its own cannot be illegal. What would that even mean.

So who did what, which jurisdiction is applicable and which paragraph forbids it?


Let’s start with number one. By this, I mean the act of publicly posting music for others to listen to for free without paying the artist.

Edit: You have since edited your comment but let’s still start there.


Uhh, is youtube-dl a thing?


Yes. Much like the RIAA, you are confusing distribution with ownership.


As others have said. There is nothing inherently illegal about the software. As long as you are licensed to share the music you host in the instance there is nothing illegal going on.

Though the RIAA might see it differently, as they have with other open-source software in the past (ref the recent DMCA takedown requests of youtube-dl GitHub repositories). They might argue the software is designed for copyright infringement and as such should be blocked.


I don't understand your confusion. Are you under the impression that the very act of sharing music online is illegal?


Yes, maybe that’s where my confusion sits. If I take a bunch of music and put together a playlist and post it on, say YouTube or my own site, that is perfectly fine?


This depends on both the music in question and your jurisdiction. There is nothing inherent about "music" that makes it illegal to share it with others. Is it Taylor Swift or something your friend recorded? It makes a big difference.

This is a tool to satisfy the use case of sharing music with others. Sometimes such sharing will be illegal, but at other times it won't.


Couldn’t the same be said for youtube-dl? Again, I don’t know.. just curious.


People seem to assume that, just because youtube-dl got a single takedown request from a prospective plaintiff, it’s now as illegal as cocaine. The reality is that youtube-dl is a perfectly legal tool, and it will continue to be so at least until a judge rules otherwise — and even then, only in a specific jurisdiction.

Should you be considered a child-molester just because I accuse you to be one?


Wow, you got real dark with that one.


Exactly, youtube-dl is a legal tool. You have to expect that everyone is trying to game the law and push the scales in their favour.

In that case, it is in RIAA's best interest that everything is locked down and they maintain exclusive control over as many things as possible. It is also in their favour to make the public view anything related to sharing of media files as suspect. That doesn't mean this position is reasonable and valid.


Yes, the same could and has been said about YouTube-dl. It depends what you do with the tool. If you are using it to download videos that specifically allow this, then there is nothing illegal about it. It's the same thing with a hammer. You can use it for legal or illegal actions, but that doesn't make the hammer an illegal tool...


By watching videos or listening to videos, you make a non-digital copy of it in your mind! Is that legal? If you hum the song, is it illegal reproduction? If you describe the video to a friend, is that unauthorized reproduction? If you formulate a critique of it, is it an illegal derieved work? Who gets payed in these cases?


Here comes the hilarious twisted language to justify 'sharing'.


Yes, as long the musician licensed his/her work in a way that let you do it. In some cases you also allowed to reuse that music in your work.

Take a look at:

https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/ https://www.jamendo.com/start http://ccmixter.org/


I’m not talking music that is under a CC license - I’m talking lil bow wow and the spice girls.


It's the same. It's not "who is?", it's "have you a license to do it?". If you have a license to reshare spice girls works, and you want to use funkwhale, well, you can.

Nine Inch Nails have CC licensed albums. So "being famous" and "music that is under a CC license" is not mutually exclusive...


I don’t think there is anyone on HN confused on that. I’m sorry if it slipped beyond you but I’m specifically talking music people don’t have permission or the rights to sharing.


The problem was with how you phrased your original comment. You implied that it (the tool?) is not legal because it offers "the ability to share your music online". This is why people started replying in this sense.


It depends on who you are sharing with and the context.

I could setup a server with my music collection and give access to my friends. That is fair-use.


Well, as much as you can make software freely available, you can also make music and podcasts freely available. However, there is no such thing as "Github for Music". I like the decentralized approach.


Have you ever seen an <audio> element on a web page? That also has the ability to share your music online.


Same great area that plex lives in i guess


If it's decentralised, then I guess it doesn't have to be legal...


the same way as Youtube or Bittorrent are legal


I’m guessing when people purchase the music as it’s not a streaming service.

With that said, it appears there is the ability to share music socially - which seems like p2p sharing.


> With that said, it appears there is the ability to share music socially - which seems like p2p sharing.

Which is fine as there is plenty of music that is allowed to be shared free.


That wasn’t their question. We all get that there is music available to be freely distributed.


>Deadlifts are great for running.

Leg blasters are significantly better and have a lower risk of injury.


Anecdotally, I have noticed that leg blasters (shitter squats in local slang) end up detrimentally affecting my balance. I never had this issue with deadlifts.


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