Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Using Spyware to Report Pirates?

Posted by Cliff on from the do-the-ends-justify-the-means dept.

An anonymous reader asks: "I have visibility to AUP complaints we receive at work, and we receive messages from a software vendor that make it obvious that their product is phoning home when it discovers it is running a cracked copy of itself." Apparently the software phones home, and then the publisher's legal department sends the administrator an e-mail. "The message goes on to detail the users IP, a timestamp, the product in question, the users PC name, username, and MAC address. This falls under -my- definition of 'spyware.' What are your thoughts?" Software has been making surreptitious checks for "piracy" for over a decade, yet these checks are usually limited to the software itself, and not data on the user's machine. Do you feel software publishers should have the right to peer into users data, if their software suspects foul play on the machine, or should it do the easy and intelligent thing and just stop working?

6 of 1,013 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Hey yanks -- ready to hear the truth? by Overly+Critical+Guy · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    I know this is just a dumb troll, but actually, England has a higher percentage of crime than the US, in all areas. Criminals are also more likely to be prosecuted here. As far as murder rates, our rate has been declining for over a decade, as their's is going up, so the gap is narrowing. Just random knowledge, I guess.

    --
    "Sufferin' succotash."
  2. Re:Hey yanks -- ready to hear the truth? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    You forgot the religious jackasses.

  3. FUCK A TRAFFIC CONE (5core: 5, insightful) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Shove a traffic cone up the offender's ass, HARD! That will teach them to steal software (or not use linux)

  4. Re:Aww diddums, have no argument do we? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Okay. Troll-bait. Yes. Fine. But, one thing to respond to..."freedom of speech" means "freedom of speech for all". Okay, so we eliminate the free speech privileges (because if they were rights you wouldn't be able to simply strip them) of race-hate groups. Who next? So you say that the decision point is whether it expresses hate or intolerance. Well, if I say another group is intolerant of me because I take a stance directly opposing theirs, who gets gagged?

    The other points you raise? Possibly (probably?) real, significant points. Freedom of speech for race-hate groups? You totally missed that mark.

  5. Re:What we want to know... by Simon+Brooke · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    If Linux is to succeed on the desktop, then third parties must be allowed to write closed-source applications for Linux.

    In whose interest is it for Linux to 'succeed' on the desktop? It may be in the corporate interest of companies like IBM, RedHat and SuSE, but it isn't in our interest. When Linux becomes just another mainstream operating system it will no longer suit us, and we'll all have to find something else (HURD, perhaps, or xBSD - I'm just starting an experimental HURD install).

    But no, my vote is that we do nothing whatever to encourage mainstream adoption of Linux. It is not in our interest.

    --
    I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
  6. ...DEAD HORSE BEATS YOU by yerricde · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    It's old.

    And you probably aren't as skilled as Yakov.

    So stop making "Soviet Russia" jokes unless you can think of something original.

    --
    Will I retire or break 10K?