I too have content of the 60s pop and classic rock variety that I would love to share...

... but only if it is invite-only and membership is tightly controlled and monitored.

Interesting idea. I could share books and apps.

The main problem is the server as it has to be dedicated.

I probably don't have anything y'all want.

Just trust me on that.

... but only if it is invite-only and membership is tightly controlled and monitored.

Right, I'd only feel comfortable with MeFi/MeCha people, and then have it only temporary until an Oink or suitable replacement comes along...

I have a ton of technical and not-so technical books that are either out of print or hard to find (and when you can find them, they're way overpriced ... even beyond the initial $150 retail). I spent the last weekend trying my best to convert them to as much a plain text format as possible. A lot were in doc, pdf or other formats. Now I've got them all in a nice looking Bodini font, two column and spacing that's great. I just need to buy a couple of laser cartridges and a lay-flat binding system and I'm set.

In any case I'm more for quality or quantity, and willing to eschew music as that might be too high profile and our tastes too esoteric.

What kind of books do you have? I usually always buy fiction and mass-market books, but textbooks get way too rich for my blood. My collection is heavily slanted toward epistemology, finance and mathematics. I've been into mathematical biology lately, but haven't had a time to really review the books.

I must add, rather quickly here, what an asset it is to have multiple textbooks on a single topic. Option pricing using Black-Scholes being an example of something that is rather simple to grasp on the surface, but to really understand it requires multiple viewpoints.

I'm in...all I have is lots of music (mp3, but I *could* be talked into re-ripping stuff I suppose) and some apps. I also know a few folks in meatspace who would be good players.

Honestly, I would LOVE to take part, but I also have zero know-how.

Interesting concept. Let us know if you work out the logistics of it all (e.g. hosting, bandwidth fees).

I vote we create a NearlyFreeSpeech.net site, and all chip in for the bandwidth. I doubt it'll exceed $10/mo.

I think NFS doesn't like hosting content that breaks US laws.

In general, sites that facilitate access to copyright-infringing content run afoul of US law and are not allowed. I don't know the specifics of this case, but I doubt the CRIA was pressuring them for distributing torrent files for Linux distributions.

https://members.nearlyfreespeech.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=9353#9353

However...

We have to pick our legal battles carefully, and the flak we would get for hosting a bittorrent tracker would seriously impair our ability to defend free speech for web hosting.

I'd been planning to stand up a tracker cgi and use torrents to distribute a couple of large-ish source archives, along with some absurdly bloated Mac OS X debug binaries .

As long as you have total control over what gets tracked, and you monitor it closely, it should be no problem. But if we were to launch a public tracker ala Pirate Bay, it would get abused and we would get badly distracted by it.

https://members.nearlyfreespeech.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=4473#4473


I think if it's a very private tracker with only known metachat members, it would work.

I'm fairly certain you can setup a tracker that only allows those with a passkey (or similar device) to leech. I bet we could go a step further and allow only 10 leeches per torrent at any given time, which would be a manual wall against a passkey getting into the wild.

The hard limit would work. Instead of 10, it could be limited to the number of registered members.