In any case, too much
Much better to ban the conversation or the mention, so the foolish current readers should be more encouraged to look to the Reddit forum, or just the NYT wirecutter website
Quite right, and I fully support enforcing the rules. But I also believe that all rules need to be reviewed for relevance from time to time. Especially rules concerning technology.
If no one holds it up to to light and asks, “Hey, do we really need this any more?” then it just stays on the books until does something to violate it and someone else has to slap their wrists.
Just saying it’s always been that way and walking away is kind of weak sauce. Review it to determine if the original objections still have as much weight as they once did.
Then if someone starts a thread asking about the best site to find current movies, slap them and it into the corn field.
If someone is asking for an easy to use torrent client to download the Gutenberg Library, let it roll.
Look, as is common with older folks on the internet, the moderators here are generally not terribly savy when it comes to technogy and the law, see JC’s post above and Colibri’s response to my OP here: https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=861384
The thing is, they can make up whatever dumb rules they want to. Maybe they don’t want to understand; maybe they’re unable to. My mom doesnt get it either. But there are plenty of other boards out there with mods who do get it if you run afoul of any supposedly naughty topics here and must discuss something.
VPNs that don’t allow, shut down, or report P2P are useless. As well as ones that do any logging. Why? Because a large principle of encryption (or other related activity obfuscation) is that everything you do needs to be encrypted. You should be hiding everything, because if your service isn’t going to protect <X>, then what guarantee do you have that they’re not going to leak or log something else? (Whistleblowing, lewd communications between you and your partner, whatever).
Obviously VPNs =/= encryption per se, if you send an unencrypted message over the internet it can still be intercepted even if they can’t find the source IP, but the same general principle applies. But, to me, a VPN that makes an exception for allowing filesharing (or otherwise has signs of not being entirely content agnostic and neutral) is extremely suspect, even if you have no intention of piracy.
You probably should ban discussion of VPNs outright if we can’t lay out all the potential ways a given service could have holes.
Missed edit: Of course, it’s good to shut down the conversation if it becomes “how can I use it for torrenting/malicious software distribution/harassment/my plans for firebombing congress” but in and of itself you need to make sure a VPN is agnostic for it to be worth anything.
Techradar: In five years, everyone will have a VPN: The big industry trends are clear: awareness, consolidation, and expansion. Trust in ISPs will dip, while awareness of VPNs will soar. Despite their promises otherwise, internet service providers will be unable to resist the temptation of reselling customer browsing data.
Slate: How to Trump-Proof Your Electronic Communications: It’s not anonymous—the VPN provider knows who you are—but if you’re worried about someone sitting in an unmarked van outside of your house and monitoring your Wi-Fi network (hey, it’s happened before) a VPN could offer some protection.
Tech Crunch: Tech tips to help stay safe in Trump’s America: Virtual Private Networks obscure your internet traffic from your ISP and others by routing it through other servers first. If all your connections are to your VPN (which then passes it on to wherever it was headed), and your VPN doesn’t keep any records of those connections, there are far fewer ways for your browsing to be tracked.
Good VPNs cost money. We don’t recommend any VPN in particular, but it should be a VPN that plainly states that it doesn’t log your traffic. Examples include XXXXX, YYYYY, and ZZZZZ ZZZ ZZZZ.[sup]1[/sup] There are dozens to choose from, however, and I don’t claim to be an expert; many are reviewed here…
My point: there are legit reasons to discuss VPNs and traffic logging. Yes, the mods walk a fine line: just saying. Two click rule observed in this post.
[sup]1[/sup]NSA Note: data enhancement in pursuant to the Information Control Act of 2019. Fnord.
Of course they can, and indeed it is in keeping with the excellent choices of this board over the years to maintain their relevance and maintain their readers levels, it is perfect to continue in the perfect path.
They should just do so without the moderators making assertions about certain facts without support and by these assertions accusing by ricochet, forbidden to discuss.
They should.
After all there are the many general media websites giving the clear information and without the silly frozen in 2001 rules, the techradar, the New York Times, the Slate…
Without a VPN, my “Location: Nanjing, PRC” wouldn’t have been visible for the five years I lived there. I’d not have been able to continue funding my Charter Membership.
My VPN has servers that allow P2P and servers that don’t. If you look at their server list, is this considered “advertising P2P”?
That first paragraph would be an example of illegal things to do with a VPN.
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You then can cite the illegality, yes? What is the legal code broken?
The owners of the site are letting us operate with very few restrictions. But not zero. Among those very few restrictions are don’t threaten to sue, for example. And restrictions in line with their great sensitivity to copyright issues. Hence the absolute ban on discussions on p2p.
If they decided to ban discussion of sugar, it would be their good right. Even though most uses of sugar are perfectly legal. It would make discussions on how to make apple pie more difficult, and in order to discuss pie-making the moderators would probably need to offer pretty strict guidance - the alternative being to ban pie-making discussions for the risk of discussions on sugar ensuing.
We’re not talking about p2p though. The mods have decided that VPN’s are primarily for p2p despite evidence to the contrary, and are apparently unwilling to even discuss the possibility that they’re wrong.
I’m not challenging the ban on p2p/torrents. While I disagree with the reasoning I understand why it would be enforced by a corporate site, particular a media owned one.
Engineer_comp_geek even admitted that it’s not an actual rule, just his preference, and that other mods may\do allow discussion. As far as I can tell, what he considers not on “the legal side of the line” is recommending a service that, like most paid VPN’s, allows (but doesn’t encourage) p2p use.
There used to be no discussion on VPN whatever, IIRC. Because the primary use of VPN at the time was (perceived to be) certain activities which we could not discuss. What E_c_g is trying to do, best I can tell, is trying to have a discussion on VPN possible under certain restrictions. There may have been an unfortunate conflation of legal and permitted by the board, they are of course 2 different things but the net effect of illegal and not permitted is the same.
It’s 2018, and VPN’s are a mainstream service now. If there used to be a rule against it (which no-one has been able to show yet) then it needs to be reviewed.
In the end they will stick with their old habits (and based on dubious assertions of usage reasons)
and no great matter.
However, it is irritatingly irrational behavior to observe, in a website that is slowly dying, to chase of without real reason the discussion of the actual modern tools and issues in the internet in 2018, based on the comprehension frozen in 2001.
When the sites owned by other media companies including those that have the digitial media concerns cheerfully publish with the ever greater frequency the articles discussing and even promoting the VPN, including making citations by name to the unholy ones forbdden and deleted from mention in that thread… It is like some strange christian sect living in fear of the excommunication of the pope for fear of going against the papal bull of 1570…
It is not them “permitting” any single thing, it is the bizarre pushing of banal discussions to the other platforms like the Reddit, when at the same time in this forum there is the begging of ideas, how to improve to slow the death…
It is a self harming comportement …
That’s the most frustrating thing, that there’s no discussion. The mod(s) have decided they won’t allow it, so that’s that. No explanation of why. No consideration the community’s opinions. They won’t even provide evidence that there is a ban, just the word of one mod (who’s mixing it up with a completely different topic).
Yes, it is frustrating. I have never been a fan of it, either. I don’t like the logic “some old threads violated the rules, so I banned the whole topic entirely,” especially when this was apparently decided by one mod without any change of the rules.
But even if there was a full on rule, I do think it needs to be revisited.
VPNs are how you get around government-level restrictions in certain countries. They are how you secure yourself when on insecure wi-fi. They prevent your ISP from throttling services due to the lack of net neutrality. They serve as an extra barrier if you’re on IPv6. They are useful for being able to connect to your home network when you’re not in.
They provide services beyond trolling websites by hiding your IP. That’s not even their main function.
As for file sharing: we’re explicitly allowed to talk about that as long as we don’t talk about HOW to do it. And having a VPN doesn’t provide file sharing. You still have to do the same things you did before.
Finally, I just think the logic isn’t consistent with how anything else on this board is moderated. We don’t ban other subjects because they usually devolve into things that break the rules. The people who break the rules get punished, or the thread gets closed after the rules are broken.
As long as people are not discussing doing anything illegal, it should be acceptable to discuss the topic.
Apologies, I should have said “could be.” And I am not an expert on Chinese law, but
“every special cable and VPN service on the mainland will now need to obtain government permission, a move that has now rendered most VPN services in the country with 730 million users of the internet, illegal.”
http://www.hackersnewsbulletin.com/2017/01/china-fireball-vpn.html
So, yes, there is a very good chance that attempting t9 bypass the great firewall with a VPN can cause some legal issues I’m China.
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I don’t believe this is actually true. This is what the actual written rule says:
Aside from debates about the legality of it P2P and file sharing are completely forbidden.
For the most part, it is acceptable to talk about those topics. Don’t confuse DCTrekkie and Ramira’s straw men for what the actual rules are here. They are vehemently arguing against rules that don’t actually exist at this point.
As was pointed out way back in post #8:
We stopped enforcing the general rule against VPN discussions long ago.
As for what the current limitations really are, again, see post #8.
So, to clarify, are we allowed to discuss VPN services that don’t keep logs and allow p2p, for example NordVPN (who I’m starting to feel i’m advertising for)?
Because that’s what you pick out in the previous thread as being against the rules.