Wait a second... By the view you're espousing right now, doesn't that make this conversation "illegal"? Why aren't we filing DMCA takedowns to HN because the list of the naughty sites is at the top of the page for this very thread?

This seems like turtles all the way down.

Sadly, you're mostly right and the comments section saying to find a pro-bono lawyer is laughable. I think anyone who believes that exists should actually reach out to a real lawyer and see how that conversation goes. I've had those conversations.

Firstly, they can't exist most of the time you can't actually call a lawyer and talk to them - you get their office and their "job" is to gatekeep that lawyer from making any discussions with anyone who isn't represented or paid for a consultation.

Secondly, once you do get into contact with them you'll get a blank stare or phone silence. This is not how most lawyers view pro-bono work. Most of them have a very small quota of pro-bono work to be done and that's it. They get assigned a case by their firm or go and accept a few a year from the state and they're done with it. The idea that an altruistic lawyer exists out there ready to do free and unpaid work is virtually non-existent today.

It's exciting to me recently with the increase in copyright abuse and AI blurring the lines that more people are going to be involved with decentralized systems.

There have been multiple different ways to host git repositories over DHT networks such as BitTorrent. Similarly there have been ways to run DHT backed commands for Linux package managers like apt.

These tools often receive little praise because the value of decentralized systems seems low when centralized systems are working to most users without too many issues.

The enshittification is ramping up so quickly recently that more people are reaching out to me on how to setup Linux syatems, home media servers, etc. I genuinely enjoy these technologies, but for the last decade I had more or less just shut up about them to avoid being that guy.

I don't know signal very well but when I have spoken to others about it they mention that the phone number is the only metadata they will have access to.

This seems like a good example of that being enough metadata to be a big problem.