Formula409
Hazard to Others
Posts: 129
Registered: 13-12-2008
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Hosting of eBooks and member websites
As posters may have seen in the book threads in the References forum, the links to books posted from months to years ago are all dead due to websites
such as Rapidshare and File.it having a policy whereby files of an age beyond an arbitrary number (usually 90 days) are deleted. Upon looking at
hosting services, I've come across ones that allow unlimited bandwidth for only mere dollars per month.
I propose that I purchase one of these services and allow other sciencemadness members to upload files by either a web form or FTP. A simple script
could be developed with PHP which would be able to compress files so that download times are reduced for members. Such a service would be like the
MadHatter FTP except that a web form and HTTP downloads would be available.
What do other members think of this? I'm more than happy to contribute this to the community for the cost of a few dollars a month. It would surely
make things much easier, resulting in a very large database of eBooks which will exist indefinitely.
My second proposition is to use the hosting service in order to provide a service for members to upload their personal websites. With the close of
Geocities by the end of the year approaching, I see this as imperative to maintaining the information unearthed by our amature scientist friends.
Obviously experimenters with hosting other than Geocities will also be welcome to use the service and will benefit from reliable, advertisement-free
hosting.
It is also possible to develop a solution which makes it very easy for experimental reports to be uploaded. The experimenter could easily type a
procedure, materials required, comments, etc into a submission form and upload pictures. A page with a predetermined format would then be
auto-generated, providing a uniform layout of experimental results. The pictures could then also be resized in order to be posted onto the
sciencemadness forum. Utilising this layout would provide a one-stop, searchable source of experimental data, all under the same domain. For example:
http://amateurscience.org/formula409/experimentx.html
I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Formula409.
[Edited on 12-9-2009 by Formula409]
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Nicodem
Super Moderator
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This all sounds great, however there is a caveat for you. If you pay for hosting you are responsible for the content, which means that if copyrighted
material is hosted, you can be persecuted by law. Depends on which country the server is located and so on, but nevertheless it is possibility to keep
in mind. After all there is a reason why most sites sharing copyrighted material do not host them, they only host links to the files which are most
commonly hosted on rapidshare-like sites which declare that they do not allow copyrighted material uploading/downloading (and actually at times also
enforce this rule, at least whenever given a hint about a copyrighted file). This declaration and their effort to delete a file from time to time
makes them appear innocent in the view of the law. The type of hosting that you propose would not be able to appear innocent at all, which means you
would have to find other means of protecting yourself.
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JohnWW
International Hazard
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Registered: 27-7-2004
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That arbitrary deletion of links by Rapidshare only applies where files, uploaded by other than "Premium" account-holders, have not been downloaded
for 90 days. And it does not apply at all to files uploaded by "premium" account-holders, such as myself. My oldest Rapidshare links are now about 3
or 4 years old, and still work.
To guard against situations where my links to uploads have been deleted as the result of someone posting them on unsecure websites without my
permission, enabling access by persons other than trusted forum members, and resulting in the Copyright Gestapo then finding them and squealing like
so many rats to Rapidshare, I have set up my permanent record of my uploads so that such deletions are almost immediately detected. I call the
culprits the Copyright Gestapo, because it smacks of the Nazi book-burnings of the 1930s in Germany and Austria, and to some extent during the Senator
McCarthy era in the U$A in the 1950s (yes, I remember it), which especially affected scientific and other learned works written by Socialists,
Communists, Jews, and other minorities. When this happens, I alter the hashes of my files by such methods as enclosing them in ZIP or RAR archives, or
enclosing small TXT files of reviews and JPG files of book covers in previously deleted ZIP or RAR archives, and then reupload them.
I have noticed that the Copyright Gestapo has been particularly active in about the last two months, causing several long-standing (2 or 3 years)
uploads of mine to be deleted. These were books on chemical engineering, physico-chemical data, analytical chemistry, and organic and pharmaceutical
chemistry, published by big-name publishers such as McGraw-Hill, Wiley, and Longmans, who, if knowingly acting together in collusion, would be guilty
of anti-competitive conduct and running a cartel.
[Edited on 13-9-09 by JohnWW]
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kmno4
International Hazard
Posts: 1495
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Location: Silly, stupid country
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The same old story....
Bad Gestapo and brave partisan called "J-Rap'share"....
Bla bla....
This forum is not for storing alive links/ebooks for eternity.
If some book was posted here, for 99,9% it is available from elsewhere, but from time to time someone starts talking of another FTP/Gigapedia-like
ebooks hosting service.
Good talking.
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