Anti-piracy Vigilantes Tracking P2P Users
brevard writes "From SecurityFocus comes news that a pair of coders with a deep hatred of software pirates have gone public with a months-old experiment to trick file sharers into running custom spyware they wrote that scolds users and phones home to a server. They circulated the program disguised as sought-after downloads like Unreal Tournament 2004 and Microsoft source code, and they have a website that updates in real time whever someone executes it. They've logged IP addresses for over 12,000 'pirates' since January. The EFF says the vigilantes may be committing a crime."
Microsoft source code why would anyone download that anywayz? microsoft is a virus, one of the most dangerous
I ought to mod you down for being a troll, and to kill your karma to boot, but it'd go against my principles. Unlike you, I like to have principles and stick to them. So I'll do something I've not done in a long time: an ad hominem attack...
/. community, more so than even the worst troll.
You, Sir, are not just an idiot, you are a disgrace to the
I hope that a slashdot editor, unlike me, will not refrain from doing the wrong thing and simply pull your account altogether.
The next time you try your 'social experiments' in the wild, better think about how they reflect on you.
For now, I'll take solace from the fact that your social experiment has just been reduced to a smoking hole in the ground where your webserver used to be and that you'll hopefully be presented with the bill for the traffic.
Damned idiot.
Karma? What's that again?
Bollocks. The equivelant situation is the one that actually happens, where law enforcement leave an unlocked car in a car park. Along comes a car thief, actively looking for one car out of many to jack. He picks that car as being the most attractive, jumps in, the doors lock, and he's collared. Good luck arguing that the unlocked door turned him into a thief.
Same here. You have to go looking for these files. You don't just stumble across them, and you don't just accidentally download them, any more than you, as a non car owner, can accidentally search through a car park and then accidentally fall into a car that isn't yours.
The EFF do a lot of good, but on this issue, they can suck my dick. They need to pick the right fights. This isn't one of them.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Hey buddy, fuck you! As a private citizen, if you choose to connect to my machine and choose to ask me if I have a given file and then choose to ask me to send that file to you, then I'll do whatever the fuck I want with your IP address and the information that you sent me.
Where exactly are you getting this bizarre notion of "right to violate [your] privacy" from? I don't need to ask your permission for jack. What's your right to privacy here, legal or ethical? You want to remain private, don't choose to hammer my machine with your requests.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Of course it's not a crime but, as a human being, you have no right screwing someone for $10k for something that took you 10 minutes to produce. It's theft of energy. It took you 10 minutes worth of energy to exist and you're going to take what took them closer to 4 months worth of energy. That's hardly a fair trade. That's my point. If it all falls into the category of "life isn't fair" then...
Quit whining when I pirate your crappy 100 line code. Life isn't fair.
Just because you've got the legal Guidos on your side doesn't make you any better than a street pimp.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80