From https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61311966

[In 2021], the House of Representatives, controlled by the Democratic Party, voted to approve legislation that would secure - and, in some cases expand - the right to abortion afforded by the Roe decision. The vote was 218 in favour and 211 against.

The bill then moved to the evenly-divided Senate, where one Democrat - Joe Manchin of West Virginia - joined the Republicans in voting it down. Because of Senate rules that several Democrats (including Mr Manchin) are adamantly against altering, passage would have required 60 votes out of the 100 senators - a mark the abortion bill did not approach.

Eligible libraries, archives, and museums have a few exemptions to the DMCA’s anti-circumvention clauses that aren’t available to ordinary citizens, but these aren’t unique to the Internet Archive. For example:

Literary works, excluding computer programs and compilations that were compiled specifically for text and data mining purposes, distributed electronically where:

(A) The circumvention is undertaken by a researcher affiliated with a nonprofit institution of higher education, or by a student or information technology staff member of the institution at the direction of such researcher, solely to deploy text and data mining techniques on a corpus of literary works for the purpose of scholarly research and teaching;

(B) The copy of each literary work is lawfully acquired and owned by the institution, or licensed to the institution without a time limitation on access;

(C) The person undertaking the circumvention views the contents of the literary works in the corpus solely for the purpose of verification of the research findings; and

(D) The institution uses effective security measures to prevent further dissemination or downloading of literary works in the corpus, and to limit access to only the persons identified in paragraph (b)(5)(i)(A) of this section or to researchers or to researchers affiliated with other institutions of higher education solely for purposes of collaboration or replication of the research.

This exemption doesn’t allow them to publish the content, though, nor would it provide them immunity to takedown requests, if it did.

These exemptions change every three years and previously granted exemptions have to be renewed. The next cycle begins in October and they started accepting comments on renewals + proposals for expanded or new exemptions in April, so that’s why we’re hearing about companies lobbying against them now.

Dunno, I think regardless of the method used by the extension, I think any extension called "Bypass Paywalls" that does what it says on the tin can pretty unambiguously be said to be designed to circumvent "technological protection measures".

“Bypass” and “Circumvent” are nearly synonymous in some uses - they both mean “avoid” - but that’s not really the point.

From a legal perspective, it’s pretty clear no circumvention of technological protection measures is taking place*. Yes, bypassing or circumventing a paywall to get to the content on the site itself would be illegal, were that content effectively protected by a technological measure. But they’re not doing that. Rather, a circumvention of the entire site is occurring, which is completely legal (an obvious exception would be if they were hosting infringing content themselves or something along those lines, but we’re talking about the Internet Archive here).

* - to be clear, I’m referring to what was detailed in the request, not the part that was redacted. That part may qualify as a circumvention.

In this case, it circumvents the need to login entirely and obviously it circumvents the paywall.

Following the same logic, Steam could claim that a browser extension showing where you can get the same game for cheaper or free circumvents their technological protection measure. It doesn’t. It circumvents the entire storefront, which is not illegal.

That’s the same thing that’s happening here - linking to the same work that’s legally hosted elsewhere.

Though as you said, these guys should probably be sending DMCAs to the Internet Archive

Yes - if they don’t want their content available, that’s what they should do. They might not want to do that, because they appreciate the Internet Archive’s mission (I wonder if it’s possible to ask that content be taken down until X date, or for content to be made inaccessible but for it to still be archived?) or they might be taking a multi pronged approach.

Maybe archive.today is the problem? Maybe they don't honor DMCA requests.

Good point. If so, and if their site isn’t legally compliant in the same ways, then the extension becomes a lot less legally defensible if it’s linking there. That’s still not because it’s circumventing a technological protection, though - it’s because of precedent that “One who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, going beyond mere distribution with knowledge of third-party action, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties using the device, regardless of the device’s lawful uses,” (Source), where “device” includes software. Following that precedent, plaintiffs could claim that the extension promoted its use to infringe copyright based off the extension’s name and that it had knowledge of third-party action because it linked directly to sites known to infringe copyright.

The Digital Media Law Project points out that there are two ways sharing links can violate the DMCA:

• Trafficking in anti-circumvention tools - which is obviously not what’s going on here
• Contributory copyright infringement - which is basically doing something described by the precedent I shared above.

I’m not sure how the extension searches web archives. It if uses Google, for example, then it would make sense to serve Google ae DMCA takedown notice (“stop serving results to the known infringing archive.piracy domain”), but if the extension directly searches the infringing web archive, then the extension developers would need to know that the archive is infringing. Serving them a DMCA takedown (“stop searching the known infringing archive.piracy domain”) would give them notice, and if they ignored it, it would then be appropriate to send the takedown directly to their host (Github, the browser extension stores, etc) citing that they had been informed of the infringement of a site they linked to and were de facto committing contributory infringement themselves.

Given that they didn’t do that, I can conclude one of the following:

1. The lawyers are incompetent.
2. The lawyers are competent and recognize that engaging in bad faith like this produces faster results; if this is contested they’ll follow up with something else, possibly even the very actions I described.
3. The archives that are searched by the extension aren’t infringing and this was the best option the lawyers could come up with.

How is the accused project designed to circumvent your technological protection measures?

The identified Bypass Paywalls technology circumvents NM/A’s members’ paywalls in one of two ways. [private]

For hard paywalls, it is our understanding that the identified Bypass Paywalls technology automatically scans web archives for a crawled version of the protected content and displays that content.

If the web archives have the content, then a user could just search them manually. The extension isn’t logging users in and bypassing your login process; it’s just running a web search for them.

while (true) { print money; }

Someone’s never heard of Bitcoin

"Glue is not pizza sauce" seems like a common fact to me but Googles llm disagrees for example.

That wasn’t something an LLM came up with, though. That was done by a system that uses an LLM. My guess is the system retrieves a small set of results and then just uses the LLM to phrase a response to the user’s query by referencing the links in question.

It’d be like saying to someone “rephrase the relevant parts of this document to answer the user’s question” but the only relevant part is a joke. There’s not much else you can do there.

Is it possible to force a corruption if a disk clone is attempted?

Anything that corrupts a single file would work. You could certainly change your own disk cloning binaries to include such functionality, but if someone were accessing your data directly via their own OS, that wouldn’t be effective. I don’t know of a way to circumvent that last part other than ensuring that the data isn’t left on disk when you’re done. For example, you could use a ramdisk instead of non-volatile storage. You could delete or intentionally corrupt the volume when you unmount it. You could split the file, storing half on your USB flash drive and keeping the other half on your PC. You could XOR the file with contents of another file (e.g., one on your USB flash drive instead of on your PC) and then XOR it again when you need to access it.

What sort of attack are you trying to protect from here?

If the goal is plausible deniability, then it’s worth noting that VeraCrypt volumes aren’t identifiable as distinct from random data. So if you have a valid reason for having a big block of random data on disk, you could say that’s what the file was. Random files are useful because they are not compressible. For example, you could be using those files to test: network/storage media performance or compression/hash/backup&restore/encrypt&decrypt functions. You could be using them to have a repeatable set of random values to use in a program (like using a seed, but without necessarily being limited to using a PRNG to generate the sequence).

If that’s not sufficient, you should look into hidden volumes. The idea is that you take a regular encrypted volume, whose free space, on disk, looks just like random data, you store your hidden volume within the free space. The hidden volume gets its own password. Then, you can mount the volume using the first password and get visibility into a “decoy” set of files or use the second password to view your “hidden” files. Note that when mounting it to view the decoy files, any write operations will have a chance of corrupting the hidden files. However, you can supply both passwords to mount it in a protected mode, allowing you to change the decoy files and avoid corrupting the hidden ones.

It sounds like you want these files to be encrypted.

Someone already suggested encrypting them with GPG, but maybe you want the files themselves to also be isolated, even while their data is encrypted. In that case, consider an encrypted volume. I assume you’re familiar with LUKS - you can encrypt a partition with a different password and disable auto-mount pretty easily. But if you’d rather use a file-based volume, then check out VeraCrypt - it’s a FOSS-ish [1], cross-platform tool that provides this capability. The official documentation is very Windows-focused - the ArchLinux wiki article is a pretty useful Linux focused alternative.

Normal operation is that you use a file to store the volume, which can be “dynamic” with a max size or can be statically sized (you can also directly encrypt a disk partition, but you could do that with LUKS, too). Then, before you can access the files - read or write - you have to enter the password, supply the encryption key, etc., in order to unlock it.

Someone without the password but with permission to modify the file will be capable of corrupting it (which would prevent you from accessing every protected file), but unless they somehow got access to the password they wouldn’t be able to view or modify the protected files.

The big advantage over LUKS is ease of creating/mounting file-based volumes and portability. If you’re concerned about another user deleting your encrypted volume, then you can easily back it up without decrypting it. You can easily load and access it on other systems, too - there are official, stable apps on Windows and Mac, though you’ll need admin access to run them. On Android and iOS options are a bit more slim - EDS on Android and Disk Decipher on iOS. If you’re copying a volume to a Linux system without VeraCrypt installed, you’ll likely still be able to mount it, as dm-crypt has support for VeraCrypt volumes.

• 1 - It’s based on TrueCrypt, which has some less free restrictions, e.g., c. Phrase "Based on TrueCrypt, freely available at http://www.truecrypt.org/" must be displayed by Your Product (if technically feasible) and contained in its documentation.”

If you’re in the US, unpaid overtime is only permissible if you’re salaried exempt. To be salaried exempt:

• you must make at least $684 every week ($35,568/year)
• your primary job responsibility must be one of the following:
  • executive - managing the enterprise, or managing a customarily recognized department or subdivision; you must also regularly direct your work of at least two FTEs and be able to hire / fire people (or be able to provide recommendations that are strongly considered)
  • administrative - office or non-manual work directly related to the management or general business operations, or
  • learned professional - work which is predominantly intellectual in character and which includes work requiring the consistent exercise of discretion and judgment, in the field of science or learning
  • creative professional - work requiring invention, imagination, originality or talent in a recognized field of artistic or creative endeavor
  • IT related - computer systems analyst, computer programmer, software engineer or other similarly skilled worker in the computer field
  • sales
  • HCE (you must be making at least $107k per year)
• your pay must not be reduced if your work quality is reduced or if you work fewer hours
  • for example, if you work 5 days a week, for an hour a day, you must get the same pay as if you worked 8 hours every day. There are some permissible deductions they can make - like if you miss a full day - and they can require you to use vacation time or sick time, if you have it - and of course they can fire you if you’re leaving without completing your tasks… but they still have to pay you.

Check out https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/17a-overtime for more details on the above.

It’s quite possible you’re eligible for back-paid overtime.

Note also that the minimum exempt wages are increasing in July.

Re your “cover my expenses just to exist” bit and the follow-up about employers catching on and pushing abusive shit… if this is related to a disability make sure to look into getting that on record and seeking an accommodation. If your primary job duty is X and they’re pushing you to do Y, but your disability makes Y infeasible, then it’s a pretty reasonable accommodation to ask to not have to do Y (assuming your HCP agrees, of course).

Instagram - I don’t know of any FOSS instagram clients that are actively maintained. Can you use it on the web with uBlock Origin enabled to minimize trackers, and try to get the contacts you care most about onto a less invasive platform?

Location tracking: there are other options that you could use, though they generally requires you to set up your own server in addition to installing the app.

• OwnTracks
• Hauk
• https://github.com/azomDev/PrivacyPin
• NextCloud + PhoneTrack

You could also use an OsmAnd integration to avoid the need for a server, e.g., using their Telegram location tracker or regularly sending lat/long via SMS (though I couldn’t find an existing solution for this).

At least as of October the DJI Fly app was reported working under GrapheneOS, see https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/2527

My understanding from https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/904-grapheneos-pixel-6-dji-fly-app-compatibility was that it requires broad storage access to work. Did you try adjusting the Storage Scopes configuration to get it to run?

I was able to read it by clicking the stop button mid-refresh, but it took me a few tries.

Per the Wired article, the Palestinian employee who was fired, Madly Espinoza, asked for and received permission to wear her keffiyeh, which was rescinded a few weeks later. She followed the new instructions and asked for and received approval to wear pro-Palestinian jewelry. She was then fired. Her termination documents did not state a reason.

For anyone who didn’t click into the original post and whose client didn’t include its text, here are the instructions for opting out:

Opt-out. You can decline this agreement to arbitrate by emailing an opt-out notice to arbitration-opt-out@discord.com within 30 days of April 15, 2024 or when you first register your Discord account, whichever is later; otherwise, you shall be bound to arbitrate disputes in accordance with the terms of these paragraphs. If you opt out of these arbitration provisions, Discord also will not be bound by them.

Note that the forced arbitration clause applies only to Discord users in the US. The class action waiver appears to apply regardless.

This is also not a new addition to their TOS, but it does appear to require opting out again even if you already did, and to grant an additional opt out opportunity if you didn’t.

Why is “Israeli” in quotes?

If a law requires then intent then of course intent is relevant.

When someone asks you “Hey, why do you think X? I looked at <insert resource here> and it didn’t add up” and you respond by insulting them and refusing to actually answer their questions, you’re more likely to get them to disagree with you than to agree with you. There’s therefore very little risk for a CIA plant to do that - nobody is going to be convinced by them, but they’ll fit into the community just fine.

Read over the conversations I had with Cayde and then ask yourself: if I came into the conversation undecided and largely uneducated about the topic, would the way Cayde engaged be at all likely to convince me? If not, what would my likely take-away be?

If people like me would, on average, be less likely to engage in the future, then that should answer your question.

Add to that the encouragement to edit the article. If members of this community are being watched by some intelligence orgs, seeing edits on the site could enable them to better link the activity, especially if someone used an account that they didn’t create fresh for their edits. That may sound like a bit of a reach but every little bit of extra information adds up, and that’s literally what surveillance orgs do.

Do you care to elaborate on why?

Thanks for the context on Tibet. The analogy helped, too, since I have a lot more familiarity with events related to e.g., the destruction of Confederate statues. I’ll have to go back and re-read the Tropes mention and so on but it makes sense to me now why mentioning the destruction of that culture without a disclaimer would be problematic / explicitly bigoted (still not sure “racist” is the right term but even if so my opposition would be solely pedantic and I’m not trying to police word choices like that).

FLG

I’ll be honest re the FLG - reading up on this yesterday was the first time I’d ever even heard of them. They’re not a very likable group.

Given what you’ve shared, it makes sense to me that their claims shouldn’t be taken at face value. That said, if people who haven’t harmed anyone are being imprisoned solely because of their beliefs, regardless of how poorly informed those beliefs are - which this New York Times article discusses - then it’s fair to criticize the state for those actions.

I still don’t see how it isn’t ignorant to hold the belief that “unironically mentioning the FLG means you’re a racist white edgelord,” when referring to someone talking about the subject matter of a show that has that subject matter, and given that as far as I can tell the imprisonment of those people is not even contested by the state.

China Uncensored is directly affiliated with Falun Gong.

That seems like pretty important context for the TvTropes article, and its omission is suspicious.

Organ harvesting

If you actually read that article, the evidence presented is laughable.

I didn’t read the whole article, though I read the counterpoints section in its entirety. From what I did read, the lines you cited were the least compelling. Importantly, there’s an entire “Evidence” section; the bit you quoted was from the section on Verdicts and Reporting.

Specifically, the following all have more merit IMO:

1. The ”Verdict by the China Tribunal” subsection
2. The rapid increase in organ transplants without attributable causes, with its timing aligned with the imprisonment of FLG practitioners.
3. Extremely low wait times for organ transplant recipients, which suggest something suspicious is going on.
4. There were multiple witnesses who described medical testing that strongly suggest those tests were intended to assess the health of organs rather than the person.
5. Posing as prospective transplant recipients or brokers, investigators called hospitals, prisons, etc., and were told they had FLG organs that could be available for transplant.
6. In Israel, several men involved in mediating organ transplants of Chinese prisoners were arrested

You’re right that none of this is definitive, especially given the bias of many of the sources, but as a whole it is clear that something other than the official account is or was happening. I’m not fully convinced one way or the other, but the arguments were compelling enough for several major governments to speak out against it and pass laws in response. Calling the evidence laughable feels shortsighted.

I’ve also been unable to find rebuttals to the specific evidence. As a contrast, the World Trade Center “jet fuel can’t melt steel beams so it must have been an inside job” conspiracy theories prompted government investigations and a ton of debunking articles that I can easily find via a web search. When I try to find debunkings of this, the best I can find is articles like this one, in which Chinese government officials admit that they used to harvest organs from prisoners, but state that they don’t anymore.

With what I’ve read so far, to believe that this is made up, I basically would have to say that the evidence itself was fabricated and ignore the discrepancies in the data, assuming that there’s some reasonable explanation for them but not seeking it out. I’m not interested in engaging in willful ignorance like that.

I can see why someone might be annoyed at an assertion of this as a fact, but to call such an assertion racist / white supremacist is nonsensical at best.

In other words, nobody's actually collected any real evidence and it's all just speculation and inference. It's made up.

Inference involves making a conclusion by taking evidence and applying logic and reasoning. Not sure why you think that’s “made up.”

Many of the people pushing the narrative have incentive to lie about China.

This seems to be the case, but unfortunately the opposite - that those rebutting the narrative have incentive to lie for China - also seems to be true.

Thanks again for all the extra info/context you’ve shared and for helping me to better understand this.

—-

Quotes below are from the wikipedia article - specifically the numbered list of evidence I mentioned above.

Tribunal:

In June 2019, the tribunal published their final judgment which unanimously concluded that crimes against humanity had been committed.[67] The tribunal's report said "forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale and ... Falun Gong practitioners have been one—and probably the main—source of organ supply."[67] The tribunal estimated between 60,000 and 90,000 transplant operations occurred per year, much more than the official figures of 10,000 from the Chinese government.[1][68] The chair of the tribunal said "there is no evidence of the practice having been stopped and the tribunal is satisfied that it is continuing."[68]

Wait times:

Researchers and medical professionals have expressed concern about the implications of the short organ transplant wait times offered by Chinese hospitals. Specifically, they say these wait times are indicative of a pool of living donors whose organs can be removed on demand.[35] This is because organs must be transplanted immediately after death, or must be taken from a living donor (kidneys must be transplanted within 24–48 hours; livers within 12 hours, and hearts within 8 hours).[90]

Medical testing:

One man, Wang Xiaohua, was imprisoned in a labor camp in Yunnan in 2001 when he and twenty other Falun Gong detainees were taken to a hospital. They had large quantities of blood drawn, in addition to urine samples, abdominal x-rays, and electrocardiogram. Hospital staff did not tend to physical injuries they had suffered in custody. This pattern was repeated in several other interviews.

Hospital / prison / detention center statements:

In one such call to a police detention center in Mishan city, an official said that they had five to eight Falun Gong practitioners under the age of 40 who were potential organ suppliers. When asked for details on the background of these individuals, the official indicated that they were male Falun Gong prisoners from rural areas.[102]

Israel arrests:

Israeli authorities arrested several men involved in mediating transplants of Chinese prisoners' organs for Israelis. One of the men had stated in an undercover interview that the organs came from "people who oppose the regime, those sentenced to death and from prisoners of the Falun Gong."[138]