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Originally Posted by Sweetpea
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Originally Posted by ardeegee
"The darknet" ... is just some stupid word someone made up to make it sound scary. I've been using "the darknet" for close to 20 years and never heard the term before coming to Mobileread.
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I'm not the only one then 
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I've known the term since my early days in IT. Thirty five years ago, however, it meant something different from the way I've seen it tossed around on MR. A "darknet" used to be simply a network that wasn't directly accessible to the wider world -- such a a local LAN that either wasn't connected to the to ARPANet (I said this was thirty five years ago, right?), or perhaps one that was, but didn't respond to pings (and thus could not be "seen" from the outside).
So I googled the term. Sure enough, there's a
Wikipedia entry which claims the term has recently come to be applied to file sharing (and by implication illicit file sharing) networks in general. And (surprise!), apparently it was a group of Microsoft employees who redefined the term.
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Originally Posted by Sweetpea
Aren't worms and virusses a thread for everybody who uses email, internet and even a mobile phone?
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Nope. Only for Windows users.
Computers don't get viruses.
Windows does. I've run around naked on the Internet for years -- no antivirus protection, no malware or spyware detection, no firewall, and never a worry of infection. Because I don't do Windows.
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Originally Posted by Sweetpea
I've downloaded books that were out-of-print, but still "in copyright".
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If the author is dead, I have no qualms about downloading his stuff, copyright or no. This whole "life of the author plus 70 years" is
whacked. A scientist patents, say, Post-It notes, and he's gets 18 years to profit from his work. An author writes a novel and his great-great-great-great-grandchildren still own exclusive rights? Absolutely nuts.