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e-Denounce
Knacklappen writes: "A British organization named Federation Against Software Theft (FAST) will according to this article on Monday launch a plug-in for Internet Explorer that will put an 'F' button on a user's browser. Pressing the button, one can easily tipoff FAST about pirated software. The plug-in captures a live example of the site for evidence as well as other basic information about the site. Great idea, but why not mark the button with 'D' for 'denounce'?"
That would only work if this software simply sends the data of the page and the url where it was found. What if it transmits your ip? Well then you can be filtered out. Only people that have low submissions from a single ip would be counted as where if you submit adobe.com and slashdot.org and freshmeat and they run a parse script, they can tell if you are trying to mess with them. Who knows though?
Lets just reverse engineer the protocol and write our own clients with spoofed source addresses. Shouldn't be that hard.
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
In order for this to work, each time you give a site an "F", you should be contractually bound so that if it turns out that the site is legit, then you are the one that gets in trouble: you would have to pay a fine.
Then, in order to give people a motive for using this plug-in, the company should pay bounty money to the vigilante via a Paypal type system.
This fine/bounty system would turn the internet into the wild west, but it might just work. You would end up with roaming internet cowboys who made a living by busting pirates.
However, the system should be more sophisticated, give the user more tools: IRC, USENet, and other protocols are often used for piracy. The report tool should be able to legally document those types of sources.
If noone could pirate software, far more people would end up using free software. Think about it.
... for reporting spam. I am NOT playing vigilante for copyrighted software. It is NOT that hard to find. And what would my reward be?
Screw that. But if I could press an F button to say 'this is spam' and have it reported, then in theory maybe somebody'll do something about it, and I'll have less shit in my inbox. That would be a rather satisfactory incentive for me to report stuff like this.
"Derp de derp."
Maybe it's because the plugin actually audits YOUR hard drive for pirated software... ;-)
Okay, we really need to get this straightened out.
First of all, allow me to establish my own credentials. I've been reasonably active in "trading" software for 20+ years, since long before there was any really active internet scene. (/crotchety voice)Back then, if you wanted to trade software you had to link up by BBS with someone, and actually go over to their house with a box full of your big-ass 5.25 floppies. It took work in those days, boy. (/crotchety voice)
Anyway, from the first time the term started being used, warez was always pronounced "wares", to rhyme with "bears".
Said Simple Simon, to the pieman,
let me taste your wares
This "war-ez" business (to rhyme with, i dunno, say, "bore fez") started up some time around the 93-95 zone, in my own experience. I'm not slamming you personally by saying this, just making an observation, but I've tended to see this pronunciation taken up by relative newbies on the scene. I don't like it. "Wares" is simple and elegant, "war-ez" is two syllables, and does not roll off the tounge anywhere near as nicely.
Not that anyone will care, don't listen to your elders, world going to hell in a handbasket these days anyway, I don't know... (wanders away mumbling)
Someone modifies it, so instead of reporting the page to FAST, the page is added to www.warez.com. ;)
FAST has long been at this kind of thing: some years back, they started pushing their "shop your boss" campaign, whereby they encouraged people to report their employers if they were using privated software.
Such tactics as these are really quite chilling, and can surely do FAST no favours whatsoever. It's ironic that, by pushing this kind of crap, the powers-that-be continue to harm their cause: these draconian tactics will only serve to encourage the view of the software pirate as a Robin Hood figure fighting an evil force. And, indeed, the organisations who're pushing this kind of stuff generally *are* the true thieves who are *truly* costing the software developers their money. After all, who can really trust people who try to convince you that, in a free market economy, the logical economic response to flagging sales (as a result of piracy) is the raising of prices...?
Most pirates know that what they're doing is questionable; compared with the likes of the RIAA and FAST, though, their sins are made to seem small and insignificant. I can only hope that continued moves like this will encourage society as a whole to address industry-serving laws that allow teenagers who copy games to be locked up, whilst (for example) keeping animal abuse acts a simple misdemeanour in several states.
I agree that I think this won't work very well, but I believe for the opposite reason you do. I think it's too easy. First off, car alarms go off mostly for no reason, not because someone is stealing a car. If you see a site distibuting pirated software, it would be more like watching a car driving away with the alarm going off. Now, imagine everyone has a little button on their pants that would alert police that a car is being stolen and give them all the necessary information and evidence to capture and prosecute the car thief. I think people would find this so easy as to be an obligation if they were to witness a car theft.
The problem is, it's too easy. These people are kidding themselves if they think that they're not going to get DOS'ed to hell. There will be plenty of erronious submissions from people who mean well but made a mistake, but there will be millions more from people who just want to fuck them over, and they'll win. Ultimately, a human will have to examine each one of these reports so it will be very very easy to flood them to the point that it's not worth it anymore. Besides all that, how often will some honest person run into pirated software anyway, unless they're specifically looking for it just to bust some pirates. But, this would be more like what you're talking about. No one is going to put forth the effort to locate software pirates just to turn them in unless they're getting paid for it.
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
This is brilliant, I wil get it.
Now I can easily denounce GPL violators!!
Starting with RM plc (rm.com) for their smartcache product that is GPL software distributed _without_ source, and _without_ offer of source.
According to Netcraft, www.fast.org.uk runs Microsoft Windows 2000, which is vulnerable to initial sequence number guessing.
There is a system which does exactly this already - StumbleUpon
It allows you to submit cool sites to it's queues, and recommends sites back to you from those queues.
augment your senses: http://sensebridge.net/
One possiblity - all of the assorted "warez" sites may start automatically bouncing anyone with IE, saying "use something that doesn't report us" or similar....
A plus for Mozilla, Opera, et al. Not necessarily the sort of advertising they'd ever want to use, but every download helps.
Beware the psychokinetic mimes!
Come to think of it, there are more than a few websites I wouldn't mind reporting. I can start w/ microsoft.com, then whats that guy who wrote the trojan and sold it to law enforcement? I'd like to report him too....
Then again, I'm not sure I'd trust a plugin from someone like that not to scan everything I look at and on my drive unless I could see the source for it.
I do security
-- Someone broke into my freezer last night and stole some of my meat.
-- How much was it worth?
-- Well, it was some old, rotting meat that I was wasn't planning to sell anymore and was going to throw out in the morning. But if it were fresh, I would have sold it for $ 20.
-- So you were robbed of $ 20.
-- Right.
Now, here I am 100% behind them. But that's not what they are going to catch with this. Try and find a web site actually selling pirated software. Go on, try. If you find one, is it based in the UK? Didn't think so, and that's all FAST cares about, despite any claims they make to the contrary.
Here's my experience with FAST. I agree with them that commercial piracy does steal from developers (where I disagree is that the amount of lost revenue is the retail cost of the pirated software, not the full price of the licensed version). And so I do actually report commercial piracy to them when I find it. I wouldn't say I'm a vigilante, just that I occasionally spend ten minutes trolling eBay.co.uk looking for obvious pirate sales, and querying the sellers about whether they are selling originals. You'd be surprised how honest and open people are about what they're selling, and it's that casual "of course they're copies, you got a problem with that?" attitude that actually pisses me off the most.
Want to know the net results of about a year of such reporting? A bunch of auctions got pulled. One guy lost his ISP access. And I received a bunch of email threats, including a death threat from a guy who lives just a few miles away (although he doesn't know that, I hope). The police have told me that they aren't in the least bit interested in handling these threats, and in fact the local constabulary suggested (informally) that I consider "not making such a bloody nuisance" of myself. FAST thank me for my efforts, assure me that all necessary steps have been taken to prevent the sale, but regret to inform me that the amounts in question are too small for them to allocate resources to a prosecution.
So, there you go. Net result to commercial pirates: a tiny little bit of inconvenience. Net result to me: I have to buy better locks for my door and keep a fire extinguisher handy.
What FAST are interested in is The Big Bust, tens of thousands of pounds. But they are not going to find this on the web, which is all this tool deals with. The Big Bust happens when they raid a market trader with thousands of CD's, or crash an office (or government department) running unlicensed Microsoft gear. But none of this is exposed on the web. This is a great solution to a problem that never really existed.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.