Posting Publicly Available URL Claimed a "Hack"

Urban Strata writes "Popular mobile phone community HowardForums.com is being hit with take-down notices from MobiTV. At issue is the fact that a HowardForums community member uncovered a publicly accessible URL for MobiTV's television stream. This URL is not encrypted or authenticated in any way, and yet MobiTV sent site owner Howard Chui a cease-and-desist letter for hosting a forum with the public URL, claiming that doing so is equivalent to hacking their service."

Comments

No just URL

[Anonymous Coward]

Except it isn't just the URL they are complaining about.

Well, what did you expect?

[suso]

Is it a hack? Not really

Does it allow people to watch TV that they didn't pay for? Yes

Does it prevent Verizon and MobiTV from receiving revenue that they should from the streams? Yes

Is it wrong? Yes

Does MobiTV and Verizon have the right to send a cease and desist letter? Sure

See folks, whether its a hack or not doesn't change the fact that its just wrong. There are too many people freeloading nowadays. The Internet makes it so much easier to freeload. And its becoming a disease. When MobiTV fixes their stuff, I'm sure a bunch of people in these forums will yell and scream about it, but few of them will actually starting paying for the service that they started to enjoy. I do agree though that MobiTV should be ashamed of themselves for leaving their service wide open.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[TheLostSamurai]

Is it stupid to make your stream available unencrypted from a publicly available URLYes

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[snl2587]

Is it wrong? Yes

No. There is nothing wrong with visiting a publicly available URL. No exceptions.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Perl-Pusher]

Is it against the law to print the address of a person and that person doesn't lock his garage? No

What makes you think this is any different? Immoral != Illegal.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[192939495969798999]

I concur, just because the door to my house is unlocked, that doesn't mean anyone is legally allowed to enter. IANAL, but this could be a similar precedent.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[professionalfurryele]

This is the equivilant of the Times sticking thier paper in the 'free newspaper' stand in the underground then complaining when I tell my friends where they can get free copies of the Times. Everything you said is correct except they do not have the right to send the cease and desist. The standards of the internet are such that any publically available URL is something I can just pick up and view. If you want to stop me viewing something you need to put in some means to tell me I shouldn't be looking at it.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[KublaiKhan]

You're going to encounter a lot of resistance trying to convince people that freeloading in this fashion is "wrong". After all, everything else on the web that's publicly accessible is considered to be 'free'; if they've made this publicly accessible without even a username/password or SIM verification or whatnot, then they've made it equivalent to any other webpage out there.

Also, they're not -prevented- from receiving revenue. Those people who have subscribed and paid are still (unless they take the time to unsubscribe) subscribed and paying. They may not be receiving as much revenue per unit of usage, sure, but nothing has been done to -prevent- them from making money.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

when people started walking into my house and taking my suff, i started locking my door. learn how to stop making excuses and secure your shit.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[khendron]

You forgot a question:

Is sending a cease and desist letter going to help at all? Not one bit

This "hack" is out there. All they are doing is attempting to close the barn doors after the horses are all gone, and apparently making the "secret" URL even more public.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Harin_Teb]

likewise: Illegal != wrong.

The OP merely said that it was wrong, he did not say that it was illegal. Wrong is clearly a statement of whether something violates ones morals (in this context).

Just sayin...

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Bogtha]

Does MobiTV and Verizon have the right to send a cease and desist letter? Sure

Do they have the right to send a letter asking them to stop? Sure. But this cease and desist letter goes far beyond that, it claims that they are infringing copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets and it claims so under penalty of perjury. Furthermore, they state they have also sent such claims to the ISP, a third-party. I think that is unsupportable and illegal, and I don't believe they have the right to do that. It's libellous and if they take it any further, it's barratry.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[peragrin]

No this is more like handing someone your own personal business card with your home address on it, while discussing the fact that your keys are broken and you don't lock your own doors.

If they URL is unencrypted and easy to get at then it's public. think of the use this link to view this image buttons.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[dwlovell]

Is it wrong to walk into a public building? No

Is it wrong to walk into a gym where you dont have a membership and start exercising just because they dont bother to check ID's at the door? Yes

This is the same thing. It is not wrong to visit a URL. It is wrong to use a pay-service that you are not paying for.

Lets try to get this into your head: You are not entitled to everything you have "access" to. If you continue to live with this mentality, DRM will be shoved at you for every kind of content imaginable.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[boristdog]

I concur, just because the door to my house is unlocked, that doesn't mean anyone is legally allowed to enter. IANAL, but this could be a similar precedent.

WRONG! YAdefinitelyNAL!

Entering a house or other property without permission is trespass. Visiting a website is not trespass.

If this were a precedent, people could start suing you just for surfing the web. Visit my website without paying? That's a default judgement for $2500.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[rucs_hack]

yup, but if they can convince some judge who doesn't understand the issue that it is a hack, it is.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[kevinatilusa]

No. There is nothing wrong with visiting a publicly available URL. No exceptions.

Various child pornography laws probably wish to differ with the above statement.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[peipas]

Is it wrong? Yes I have a hard time applying morals to a situation like this. Besides, will there be more, less, or the same number of subscribers after they shut this URL down? If we're going to turn on moral evaluation, is it "wrong" for Verizon to charge 15 cents to send a text message? It certainly violates my values.

Additionally, there is no should receive revenue. If they want to receive revenue they can fix their shit instead of sending takedown notices. It sounds like they just don't want to have to revamp their architecture.

Finally, and pardon my tangent, in my opinion this disease is a symptom of a lack of respect for current realities such as unlimited copyrights. I share this sentiment. Am I depriving a corporation from revenue if I download a song from the 60s? Should that corporation still be receiving revenue for work that was done decades ago? I suppose it depends on your outlook.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Knowing nothing about the service, if someone emailed me a public url, how would I possibly know that I was "stealing"?? I mean certainly if you were selling a service, you wouldn't be dumb enough to just make it available without some sort of protection, right?

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[AK Marc]

More like: Is it wrong to walk into a library without a library card?

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Eharley]

well they're within their rights in asking you to stop.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[alexhs]

There is nothing wrong with visiting a publicly available URL. No exceptions. I guess you never stumbled upon a goatse or tubgirl publicly available link, then :P

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[spun]

What about a publicly available URL for child porn? What about a URL to make donations to a terrorist organization? What about a URL where, every time you go there, it sets off an automated script that pulls the trigger on a shotgun and shoots an adorable kitten in the face?

Visiting a public URL in itself is never wrong. What you do there may or may not be. We aren't talking about just 'visiting a public URL.' We are talking about taking a service you don't pay for.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[natoochtoniket]

Is it a hack? No. It's an url.

Does it allow people to watch TV that they didn't pay for? Yes. The TV is offered for free. People who accept the offer can watch it for free.

Does it prevent Verizon and MobiTV from receiving revenue that they should from the streams? No. Verizon and MobiTV could just withdraw the free offer, and implement a different access-controlled method for the same video.

Is it wrong? No. Someone offers free goods. You accept the offer. You have not done anything wrong.

Does MobiTV and Verizon have the right to send a cease and desist letter? Yes. Anyone can write a letter. It means nothing.

Were MobiTV and Verizon stupid to offer this data online for free? Maybe -- It could have been done intentionally. Lots of people put video online, for free.

Were MobiTV and Verizon stupid to continue offering this data online for free, after they decided that they didn't want to? Yes.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Hillgiant]

How am I to know that membership is required if they do not ID? If I walk into a Gym and no one IDs me, I think "hey, cool. public gym. didn't know they still existed". If I stumble across a link to a TV stream, I think "hey, cool. free video. I wish they had stripped the ads." I feel it is unreasonable to expect the end user to determine if he or she should be paying for a service. If the service is pay only, it should have some method of access control. A lack of access control implies free (as in beer).

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[plague3106]

If you own 10 other properties, and you ARE free to enter those at any time, and you post signs saying, how does someone know your 11th property you aren't free to legally enter, if there's no sign at that particular property, and your other signs say "open to all?"

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[wsanders]

What other stuff do they have that's accessible, on this site that was obviously programmed by dumbasses? Like credit card sumbers, Tax ID's?

Nothing! I would be shocked and appalled if it were so!

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[sm62704]

See folks, whether its a hack or not doesn't change the fact that its just wrong.

No, what's wrong is the cease and desist. If your URL is publically accessable then it's up to you to secure it. It is NOT up to me to not access it and it's not up to me to not publically disclose it. If you don't want me at your URL then you should get it the hell off the internet.

If your technical skills are so poor that you can't secure it, then perhaps you're in the wrong line of work.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Captain Splendid]

Is it wrong to walk into a gym

FAIL. This is slashdot, you're supposed to make car analogies.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[youngdev]

It looks like you are making logical jumps that don't seem to fit.

Does it allow people to watch TV that they didn't pay for? Yes I don't pay for use of google or youtube either. I just plug the URL in my browser and away I go. This is the nature of unauthenticated web resources.

Does it prevent Verizon and MobiTV from receiving revenue that they should from the streams? Yes There are 2 problems with this claim:
1) this assumes that every one who uses the service without paying would still want it bad enough to pay for it if it weren't available freely.
2) if a resource is publicly available but the authentication costs money, then I would argue the revenue comes from people wanting to be authenticated not have access to the resource

Is it wrong? Yes WTF how the hell did you make this jump. This is the equivalent of taking some private content and posting it on a billboard along the highway. If I do that I cannot have an expectation that my content will be viewed without getting revenue for it.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[tixxit]

That analogy doesn't work. There is no law saying I cannot visit a URL and read its contents. There is, however, laws against trespassing. This would be more akin to a newspaper guy putting newspapers he sells on a counter, then complaining when someone starts reading the front page off the counter without buying it. Its not illegal, but it isn't necessarily right. Now, there are laws against bypassing/breaking encryption schemes. That was set up solely for situations like this, and its really their own stupidity that they didn't take advantage of it (this is the same reason why we can't rip our own DVDs).

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Shagg]

Your house is private property, which is why people are not allowed to enter. It has nothing to do with whether the door is locked or not.

This situation is similar to putting up a big sign in your yard that is visible from public property, and then complaining about people who look at it. If you want it to be private, then don't make it visible from public property. Same thing with a URL. If you want the content to be private, then don't make the link publicly accessible. If you do make it public, you can't complain when people look.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[kisrael]

Oy, metaphor straining!

Is it more like walking into a library w/o a card and browsing the stacks and reading in the library, or like talking a book home?

You can't use your metaphor without answering which, and the answer explaining which is the more correct metaphor is probably more work that arguing the case itself.

That said this "everything that's not nailed down is ok for me to walk off with" mentality probably IS keeping the DRM race ratcheted up.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[McDutchie]

Is it wrong? Yes

No. There is nothing wrong with visiting a publicly available URL. No exceptions.

The URL was not intended to be public and everyone involved knows this. It's like you're saying it's not wrong to burgle someone's house and steal things you don't own because they failed to lock their doors.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[sm62704]

We aren't talking about just 'visiting a public URL.' We are talking about taking a service you don't pay for.

You're talking about leaving a cardboard box full of merchandise in a public park with a signs saying "take one, leave a dollar" and a cease and desist to a person who posts a sign saying "hey there's stuff in the park".

In short, we're talking about incredible stupidity.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Joe the Lesser]

It's more like someone posting your home address on a web forum, and then some guys come and look at your house from the street.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[aproposofwhat]

Not only that, but the letter claims the infringement under penalty of perjury, then in the next sentence affirms that the entire contnets of the letter are 'without prejudice', and not guaranteed to be accurate.

Which idiot makes claims like that?

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[KublaiKhan]

Browsing the stacks, in this case.

You're not preventing anyone else from browsing or checking out the books, and at worst you're taking up a little bit of space in the hall. The resources that you've accessed are still there for all the other patrons.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Ngarrang]

Is it wrong? Yes

No. There is nothing wrong with visiting a publicly available URL. No exceptions.

So, if someone walks into your house while the front door is open and sits on your couch, it must be okay...because you left the front door open. Right?

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[knight24k]

No, It is not the same thing and there is nothing wrong with entering said gym and exercising without paying for it if the employees ALLOW you to do so. That is the equivalent here. They are allowing this access not the site owner exposing their non-existent security. They are allowing anyone that attempts to access this url open and free access with no restrictions. There is no DRM, there is no logon requirement, nothing. This is the same as putting the wares for your store in the middle of the street and then complaining when people take them without paying.

They can ask him to take down the url all they like, but If I was the site owner I would tell them to go fsck themselves and go secure their site. IF this was a hack of their security that was being exploited, that would be another matter but it is not. Advertising that their IT staff are idiots is not wrong and as long as they do nothing to prevent access to this URL by unpaid customers they are tacitly allowing such access.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

And I'm within mine telling them to piss up a rope.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[goldspider]

"I feel it is unreasonable to expect the end user to determine if he or she should be paying for a service."

It takes an unhealthy dose of willful ignorance to fail to make that determination on your own.

And yet you're puzzled by why digital content producers try so hard to prevent their works from being 'mistakenly' acquired by people who (according to you) can't determine if they are entitled to said works for free.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Stradivarius]

Wrong analogy. It's more like printing the address of an office where a company is giving away free samples. By creating a web service that is available at the given address to anyone who asks, that is exactly what MobiTV has done.

It's ridiculous for them to then complain that someone dared advertise what the company itself was doing. If they don't want people to take the product for free, stop giving it away.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[immcintosh]

Does MobiTV and Verizon have the right to send a cease and desist letter? Sure

Well, to the same degree that everybody always has the right to send such a letter, pretty much without restriction. The important question is, are these cease and desist letters legally reasonable? I would say, not in the slightest.

Here's my take. Is it ethical to avail yourself of their streams without paying for them? No, but under the circumstances, ONLY on account of the bandwidth you're costing them. Is it ethical for them to send C&D letters when they are CLEARLY doing nothing to limit free public access to their resource? No, the ethical response would have been to plug the security hole, and call it a day. I honestly can't see any legal ground for them to stand on here, and would guess that it would have been cheaper and faster to simply plug the hole rather than going the litigious bastard route.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[deprecated]

Is there a sign in the unlocked gym that says 'members only' ?
Is there a sign on the equipment that says 'members only' ?

Just because your parsimonious universe lards itself with greedy owners doesn't mean that my universe is not built entirely out of manna and coupons.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Joe the Lesser]

Uh, don't think it's that clear cut.

If I'm surfing the dregs of the internet looking for coveted pics of Natalie Portman petrified and covered in hot grits, and some javascript redirects me to a child porn page am I:

1. A criminal?

2. A criminal if I don't close the browser within 5 seconds?

3. Innocent?

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Elsapotk421]

well would it be wrong for me to go to my friends house and watch his television? I'm not the one paying for it. they're receiving someone else's funds.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[StarvingSE]

These meatspace metaphors just don't work when it comes to technology. It is wrong to walk into a library and take anything that's not nailed down. This is also preventing other library users from using those same resources. In this case, accessing the stream is not preventing paying customers from using the service. Therefore, the metaphor does not work.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[ttapper04]

I think you make a few good points. Whether or not they have the right to send a cease and desist order is irrelevant in this case. This looks to be an issue that the market will correct on its own.

Company looses revenue (freeloaders)= Correct the problem (change the link)

I'm not sure where lawyers fit in to this equation.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[MobileMrX]

Is it wrong to walk into a car?

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[spun]

Nah, flawed analogy. More like, I have a box of merchandise in my garage. I leave the door open, and someone comes along and posts signs saying, "free stuff in this guys garage, take all you like!"

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[devnullkac]

Yes, but public buildings and private gyms have clear demarcations as to what is public and what is not. If the gym has a dozen rooms and the first one I happen upon has no lock, no ID check, and no sign stating the requirement that you be a member, I cannot know to stay out; it could be demo equipment put there to entice me to become a member.

Similarly, if a URL doesn't have an authentication lock and doesn't say you must be a paying member to access, how can I distinguish pay content from a free giveaway?

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Intron]

The best part of the cease-and-desist exchange was this:

"Originally Posted by mobitv
The url "qtv.mobitv.com/sprintTVlive.mcd" is not publicly available, nor is it posted anywhere on our website for viewers to access. The only way to access the links is through this url, and the only way to obtain this url is through hacking/debugging."

mobitv posted their "secret" URL in a message on the forum. So much for the trade secret claim.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[thekm]

FAIL. This is slashdot, you're supposed to make car analogies.

FAIL. You're actually meant to think of the children!

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a common law theme at work here. On the Internet, when you visit a website and there is no attempt at displaying a price or asking for payment, the service is assumed to be free. No matter what the content is, it might be some kind of demonstration or promotion. Companies that run paid services are explicit about what they cost, how to pay, and make reasonable attempts to prevent access until payment is received. Which of those things was happening here?

When I visit a ANY URL that comes from Google or elsewhere, I assume I am viewing free public content. Anyone who runs a pay service and unintentionally gives away the content is technically inept.

Many things on Internet pay sites are also available for free if you know where to look. Is it theft of service if I read a news article from Google cache instead of paying the newspaper's website for an old article? There are many paid content management systems that publish articles by various writers. If I see an article listing on a site, view the free abstract, and then Google some key words and phrases, I can often find the paid article for free elsewhere. Have I stolen anything? In my opinion, no.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Bogtha]

What about a URL to make donations to a terrorist organization? What about a URL where, every time you go there, it sets off an automated script that pulls the trigger on a shotgun and shoots an adorable kitten in the face?

These are bad examples because in order to actually do the harmful act, you either have to POST information (something distinctly different from retrieving the URL), or the other party has to subvert the HTTP protocol (which you can't reasonably be considered responsible for). Straight from RFC 2616:

The important distinction here is that the user did not request the side-effects, so therefore cannot be held accountable for them.

Or think about it this way: whenever you visit a web page, the author of that web page can induce you to request any URL they like automatically. Chances are, you won't even be aware of it. Still think it's a good idea to hold people accountable for merely visiting a URL?

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[macbeth66]

Say what? And just how am I supposed to know that a site is or is not for public consumption? If it is open for all to see, I have a right to see. They might as well have placed a TV set in Times Square and complained that people were looking at the TV.

No wonder we are going down the toilet with this kind of stupid thinking.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Sta7ic]

"If you don't want it known, don't use the phone."

I don't think there's anything wrong with visiting the link -- they set it up in the clear. The wrong is with the way MobiTV implemented it, which is their own fault. Using the legal system as a hammer is an improper solution when your product doesn't work as you expect it to. You shouldn't use lawyers to fix a development problem.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[snl2587]

The URL was not intended to be public

Need I say more?

Why is it that so many people jump to burglary whenever these online situations arise? By viewing these videos you're not denying someone something, or physically taking anything.

No, the only people I feel sorry for in this case are the people who are paying for the service. They could have been getting it for free.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[berashith]

Depends on how fast the car is going, or how many LoCs it has on its trailer.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[snl2587]

No. Read my other comment in this thread and stop extrapolating.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are too many people freeloading nowadays. The Internet makes it so much easier to freeload. From the way you post, you sounded exactly like the type of person who leeches off society and people--the worst type of scumbags.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[knight24k]

Here is about the best metaphor I can come up with.

You go to visit your local zoo because they have a rare tasmanian devil on display. Entrance fee is $5. You notice on arriving that the back of the cage for this animal is clearly open to the street at the rear of the zoo. Instead of paying your admission you walk around back and look at the rare animal without paying, from the street. The zoo then has you arrested for theft.

That's about as good as I can do.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[MostAwesomeDude]

Yeah, that's why some of us are not big fans of the child porn laws.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Blkdeath]

Yes, but public buildings and private gyms have clear demarcations as to what is public and what is not. If the gym has a dozen rooms and the first one I happen upon has no lock, no ID check, and no sign stating the requirement that you be a member, I cannot know to stay out; it could be demo equipment put there to entice me to become a member.

Are you for real?

It has never been legally permissible to enter a building without the owners consent. There is no such thing as a "public building" - buildings are private property owned by individuals, companies or the government that in some cases deal with the public. You are not allowed to simply enter a building and start using the facilities provided.

This is just another example of the freeloading culture on the Internet and on Slashdot in particular. You are not entitled to everything the world has to offer. This television service made a mistake but they are well within their rights here and hopefully will learn a lesson and fix the hole. But what happens if another hole is discovered? At what point do we declare intent to be malicious rather than "weak security"?

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[kd4zqe]

Is it wrong to walk into a gym...

Please keep in mind how unlikely this is with your current audience.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Neo_piper]

Forgive me if I'm mistaken but isn't the freeloading just Market Economics at work?
As I see it the weakness of the product has been demonstrated and now it's our turn to make it unprofitable thus encouraging a stronger product.

To sum it up "It's not theft it's a boycott in reverse."

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Brian Gordon]

How is it wrong to just visit a completely public URL? If they're losing money it's their fault; you can't just say that verizon losing money is wrong. How is that wrong? We're gaining value. Nothing has been destroyed here. This situation is purely verizon's affiliate being lazy and insecure, and you're just stupid for thinking it's wrong to take advantage of that.

Also, this reminds me of this story where reuters was accused of hacking for posting a publically-available but secret URL. Everyone thought it was a complete joke and reuters lined up its battalion of lawyers and pumped the plaintiff full of hot lead. How is this any different?

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[NeutronCowboy]

I watch plenty of TV without paying directly for it. It's called over-the-air. Here's the point that you're missing: it is impossible for me to determine whether an open URL was supposed to be open or was simply the result of stupid design. I refuse to get into the business of second-guessing web-site operators whether their web-design monkeys knew what they were doing or were simply throwing shit at the wall. Or do you want me to call up CmdrTaco to check whether I really, really do have access to all the public URLs on slashdot.org?

Here's the second point that you're missing: there's something called civility and accountability. If you screw up, I expect you to take responsibility for screwing up and fixing whatever it is that needs to be fixed. I might help you fix your screw-up if you ask me nicely. I will not help you if you're being a dick.

In short: MobiTV screwed up, big time. When they try to fix their crap by blaming me, I will just give them the finger and try to screw them out of as much revenue as I can. Sadly, I don't own a phone or a browser that recognizes these URLs, otherwise I'd be all over it.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[gnick]

If I walk into a Gym and no one IDs me, I think "hey, cool. public gym. didn't know they still existed". I've got to call BS on that one. You may think, "Hey - They failed to put up a members only sign or check ID. I can work out and, if they stop me, pretend that this is my first day in the modern world and didn't know that they expect payment." But you'd have to be really disconnected from society if you honestly thought that you just found a free gym...

Now, if you click a link to a site that was showing video and stuck around to see what they had, pleading ignorance may be a little more realistic. But, once you learn that you're only able to watch that video due to a huge oversight by the site owner, I'd say the gym analogy is apt.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[VWJedi]

If you left your front door unlocked, would that entitle me to go inside, watch your TV, and raid the fridge? I think we'd all agree that in that case, a lack of access control does not imply free (as in the beer I found in your fridge).

The key question is "Did the user know he was not entitled to use this service?" Also, "Would an average person with no prior knowledge of the service assume that it is 'open to the public'?"

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[houghi]

Wishing, yes. Luckily that is not the case.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[madseal]

Nicely put...

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Telvin_3d]

Actually, I don't think they charge you with visiting a URL. They charge you with looking at child porn.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[matazar]

He did phrase that badly.
In either case this whole thing is ridiculous, it'd be like me sending letters to anyone linking to one of my domains because I don't want them publicly accesible.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Captain Splendid]

FAIL. Your tag-fu sucks!

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Sloppy]

Does it allow people to watch TV that they didn't pay for? Yes

Wait a minute. Identify the "it." Does what allow people to watch TV that they didn't pay for?

You're talking about MobiTV's server, right? MobiTV allows people to watch TV they didn't pay for.

Does MobiTV and Verizon have the right to send a cease and desist letter? Sure

To whom should they send that letter, such that the letter might accomplish their goals? (i.e. Who is the party that may have injured them? Who needs to take action to correct the problem? Who needs to change the behavior of their server to only send TV to customers?) Their own IT people, that's who. The blog has nothing to do with this. MobiTV lashed out in the wrong direction.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[gnick]

...some javascript redirects me to a child porn page am I: 1. A criminal.

IANAL but, under current law as I understand it, you're now guilty of possession of child pornography. If you choose to self-report or are caught through other means, the best you can do is hope that you're not prosecuted because it was an accident. The same goes (I believe) for possession of stolen goods ("But I paid $$ for it in a pawn shop and had no idea it was stolen!") or possession of narcotics ("He said they were just OTC pills to help keep me from dozing off!")

Awkward laws... Any idea of a fix?

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're not exercising in a gym. They're telling people where there is a gym that doesn't bother to check IDs at the door. Is that different to you?

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[stimpy77]

It takes an unhealthy dose of paranoia to click randomly on a link in a forum and think you're not supposed to be there, when there are no authentication checks along the way.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[astrotek]

More like: is it wrong to walk into a building open to the public but secretly requires membership and gives you no warning that they assume you are trespassing.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Fishbulb]

What about a URL where, every time you go there, it sets off an automated script that pulls the trigger on a shotgun and shoots an adorable kitten in the face? What about a public building whose front door is rigged up with a shotgun that "shoots an adorable kitten in the face" when the first person opens the door? Is it the fault of the person who opened the door, or the person who rigged up the shotgun to the door? Regardless of whether or not the person opening the door knew about the shotgun?

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[ehrichweiss]

They're also just asking for the Streisand Effect to bite them in the ass, especially with their lack of security. It would have been better to simply fix the security issues and watch the freeloaders drop off like flies. Instead they chose the route that will actually cost them the most since everyone is now well aware of it so the bandwidth will go up, they will still have to put up security AND they get bad publicity. Sounds like sticking up for their "rights" worked out well.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Blkdeath]

See folks, whether its a hack or not doesn't change the fact that its just wrong. There are too many people freeloading nowadays. The Internet makes it so much easier to freeload. And its becoming a disease. When MobiTV fixes their stuff, I'm sure a bunch of people in these forums will yell and scream about it, but few of them will actually starting paying for the service that they started to enjoy. I do agree though that MobiTV should be ashamed of themselves for leaving their service wide open.

It's not only a shame, but also indicative of the very thing you reference that you were modded down as flamebait. Why? Because there are a lot of freeloaders with moderator points right now, clearly.

The world has changed, and it's not for the better. It used to be when you looked around for a product you looked for good, quality service and value for your dollar. Nowadays people just look for how they can spend the fewest dollars possible. It's everywhere - entertainment media, clothing, electronics, cars, Internet service, restaurant and grocery store food - everywhere!

People are actually not only willing, but in some cases GLAD to accept sub-standard quality products that break and fail within a fraction of the expected lifespan because they got a big discount. Seriously; should a pair of jeans last 2 years or 20 years? Should a stereo system fail after 3-4 years or should you be able to pass it down to your children still sounding as good as the day you bought it? Or, wait, does it matter? This one was 50% off.

Should it be acceptable for cars to rot out or have failures in their major components after a few short years? Is it really a benefeit to save $4000 and get 0% financing on a vehicle if you're going to be forced to spend the same or more on repairs down the road, else just buy another one to replace it? Or would you rather get $1000 discount and 4% financing on a vehicle that'll actually last you ten years?

What about computers? Used to be you'd buy a computer and you could simply upgrade components every year or so and you'd be in good shape. Now you're not so much updating components as replacing failed components. How many of us have suffered PSU failure, CPU fan failure, motherboard capacitor failures, RAM parity errors or hard drive failures in the past few years? Is it REALLY beneficial to buy a computer for $499 if you know you're going to have to bin it in a year?!?

Internet services are probably one of the best examples - people will strive to get the highest Mbit/sec rate for the lowest dollar amount per month then complain when they're penalized for saturating it. Talk about "Waahhmbulance" territory. How many people do you think are prepared to shell out the dough for a fractional T3 to get dedicated bandwidth to run their torrent clients or UseNext clients on? "Wah, but the companies shouldn't be selling it if they can't deliver!" - hello! The idiot consumers they cater to are too damned stupid to understand SLA versus a high bitrate so what do they market? A high damned bitrate at a bargain basement price.

Well, all in all people, you get what you pay for, and those of you out there who bitch and moan and complain and freeload and get sent C&D letters and threats of lawsuits? Well, you should have thought of that. And hey, try to think about that if your boss ever decides they don't want to pay you for the work you do for them anymore, or they suddenly decide that your skills are such a commodity that they can pay you a fraction of your current salary. Damn, sucks when the shoe's on the other foot huh?

I can't wait for the torrent of responses I'm going to get about greedy corporations wanting to maintain their bottom lines, and information is destined to be free and all that other hogwash. Meanwhile price competition is hitting bottom lines to the point where the companies have to do what? Hey! Outsource to ${THIRD WORLD COUNTRY} at a fraction of the wages! Didn't you people ever consider the ramifica

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[realthing02]

What if the advertising is mis-representing the product. Extending your analogy (and to make it more correct), You're calling it free samples, the samples are actually for business partners who are users of some service, but they don't check your id (tying in that gym membership!). Now, because you advertised free samples, you're the one who is morally wrong (I don't really care about criminally wrong), the people who read "free samples" and went and got it, probably didn't know.

People who randomly followed the link probably don't know, but many people will eventually figure out what's going on, and that's the issue here. People knew it was to be a pay service, but took it anyways. Are they criminal? I don't know, morally bankrupt on THIS issue? I would say yes.

There is a problem in our society, when people do things that are not criminal, but are still wrong. The debates that we have here are evidence enough of that, and many have touched on it. I "understand" that it's a large corporation that isn't 'losing money' per se, but there are opportunity costs. The same thing happens to band members with an album, artists with a work of art, and chef's with a new recipe. When do you draw the line and say "I won't, even if I can"?

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[ArcCoyote]

Huh? The intent to view child porn is what's illegal. Visiting a site you didn't know contained it is not. And you probably aren't going to be able to find that stuff by accident, or it would disappear really quick. Google has probably crawled a site with child porn on it at some point, are they liable? For that matter, this is illegal text right..

->here-

Now, /. says right down there that "Illegal" comments will be moderated. Say it gets modded way down. Does that mean you break the law just by visiting the story URL where you MIGHT see it... or is the URL only illegal if you set your threshold to read everything?

The law is all about intent. If I replace an image on my site people are hotlinking to with child porn, I'm the one getting in trouble for it, not the people who suddenly see it on their sites. (And yes, things like this have been done. I don't know about with child porn, but certainly with hate speech.)

In any case, the content at MobiTV is legal and publicly accessible.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[samkass]

No. There is nothing wrong with visiting a publicly available URL. No exceptions.

At one point Yahoo had a security hole where they had an authentication service that accepted "nextURL" as one of the parameters. It was fairly easy to devise a URL that would direct the user to a valid Yahoo authentication page, then on success refer the user to an alternate phishing site that told the user the password was entered incorrectly and prompted for it "again". Of course, the second time the phishers got the username and password. Just because something is "just a URL" doesn't mean it isn't hacking or that it shouldn't be illegal to use.

Just because you see someone accidentally leave something sitting on a park bench it doesn't mean it's moral, ethical, or possibly even legal to pick it up and walk away.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[ehrichweiss]

"But you'd have to be really disconnected from society if you honestly thought that you just found a free gym."

So that gym I go to every Saturday to take martial arts has been charging all these years? Seriously, I go to a free gym every Saturday to train; the name is the Black and Williams Neighborhood Center just in case you think I'm bullshitting. These aren't unheard of in most civilized countries so one has to wonder who is really disconnected from society as per your statement above.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[spun]

Are you saying that people just accidentally go to that URL and get sued? Because that is what your analogy implies, and I don't think that's valid.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[moosesocks]

If a shopkeeper leaves his doors wide open after leaving for the night, it would still indeed be illegal to steal from that store (and you'd probably be found guilty if caught).

However, it'd be damned easy to do so, and it would be pretty damn negligent on the shopkeeper's part. Likewise, no insurance company on the planet would dream of covering his losses over those circumstances.

Now imagine how stupid it'd look for the shopkeeper to begin suing every person who walked by the shop and noted that the doors were open..... and continued to leave his doors open throughout this process.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[nickyj]

Are you for real? It has never been legally permissible to enter a building without the owners consent. There is no such thing as a "public building" - buildings are private property owned by individuals, companies or the government that in some cases deal with the public. You are not allowed to simply enter a building and start using the facilities provided. Are you serious? I can walk into a Starbucks (a business) use the bathroom (provided no signs stating otherwise or locks/persons to stop me, which most don't have) and leave. Is it legally wrong? No. Is it morally wrong? Yes, I should have bought something to provide revenue to the establishment to maintain the bathroom properly. This website is basically the same. It's a business, people came in and used the streams, there were no signs saying it wasn't allowed and no restrictions on getting to it.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Except that their method of distribution is more akin to building an open gym at a public park. Personal trainers here in San Diego do build businesses using state beach (and county and city) park areas. No problem. It works. But in terms of right to access, they have no more claim on the area than anyone else. If they wanted that, they'd have to build their own private club. Which is doable for Sprint, they just didn't ever actually do it, and now they want to pretend like they own rights they'd have had had they done so. If a broadcast TV station decieded they wanted to go cable, and pretended they had, and wanted to charge membership rates, they could do that. But by broadcasting on an open air-wave *anyone* can watch. Period. Pay-service model not relevant.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Blkdeath]

Are you serious? I can walk into a Starbucks (a business) use the bathroom (provided no signs stating otherwise or locks/persons to stop me, which most don't have) and leave. Is it legally wrong? No. Is it morally wrong? Yes, I should have bought something to provide revenue to the establishment to maintain the bathroom properly.

And they're well within their legal rights to stop you from doing so either by locking the door or guarding it physically.

Starbucks establishments are not public buildings. Don't ever forget that. They are private property that offer goods to the public. You do not have any more right to be there than the baristas have to be in your living room or using your bathroom.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[uniquename72]

Is it wrong to walk into a gym where you dont have a membership and start exercising just because they dont bother to check ID's at the door? Yes Where this analogy breaks down: When I visit a URL, I'm not physically moving -- that stream of electrons is coming into my house because someone has purposely set it up to do so over an internet connection that I pay for.

A better analogy is: Is it okay to work out on gym equipment that someone has set up in your house, but not given you permission to use? The answer is yes, because it's my fucking house.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[LingNoi]

I'm not arguing for or against, but I do want to point out that your points don't really fit with the subject as the people in the forum posted the link knowing that the content they were accessing wasn't free, so claiming ignorance as you do in your example would be the wrong analogy.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[mea37]

Oh, great.

Now you've opened up the line for yet another debate on the true meaning of "steal".

A lot of people don't accept that the legally-assigned right to profit from (propagation of) information (1) is a distinct thing from the information itself, and (2) can be and is destroyed / taken from the right-holder when unauthorized propagation of the information occurs.

I don't agree, and for that reason I don't have a big problem with the shorthand of calling it theft in casual contexts even though the analogy is imperfect.

Or rather, I wouldn't have a problem about it, except the reality today is it pushes the debate away from the issues as people wrangle about the semantics.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Is it more like walking into a library w/o a card and browsing the stacks and reading in the library, or like talking a book home? The later makes the book unavailable. This would be akin to hacking their servers and deleting a file. The former (browsing the available library material) would be more like (browsing) the shows. The stream is still available. The real question is, do you have the right to walk into the "library" in the first place? If they have an authentication system in place, I'd say that cracking that would be a form of Breaking and Entering. If it is a public URL, then any intention to keep the URL secret is doomed to eventual failure, and wouldn't seem to me to matter legally or ethically.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[alfredo]

Diebold put their voting machine source code online with no protections at all.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[civilizedINTENSITY]

I'd suggest that your analogy could be extended thus:

A private, authenticated access system would be like having a dog show in a private venue. An open, public URL is like taking your dogs for a walk in Balboa Park. Everyone has the right to go there, and no one can stop you from looking at the other people and stuff there, too.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[suso]

I can't believe how much of this crap logic is being modded up as insightful. You are conveniently justifying taking advantage of other people because they are dumb. Is that right? No. Not when its a single person, not when its a corporation. If you don't like a big greedy corporation, then the right way to fight them is not by stealing. As the old adage goes, an eye for an eye makes the world go blind. There are better ways to battle corporations that are doing things wrong. Don't be part of the mob, be a role model.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[mea37]

It's not that simple.

The information, or Verizon's copy thereof, or their legal suscribers' access thereto -- those things are not destroyed.

The legally assigned rights related to profit for distribution are damaged.

Yes, Verizon can and should take steps to protect that value; but that doesn't make ir "right" or "ok" to take part in destroying it just because it's easy to do so.

The law probably should state that making information publically visible by posting it on the web without protection constitutes an implicit license to all who visit that URL. This would clear up a lot of problems.

If it were so, companies like Verizon would get serious about protecting their web-based content (or, failing to do so, have no recourse). Unless/until it is so, their failure to lock the doors doesn't make it ok to walk in and take what isn't yours.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[acvh]

"It's like you're saying it's not wrong to burgle someone's house and steal things you don't own because they failed to lock their doors."

so many bad analogies in this discussion.... and this one is among them.

Actually the situation is more like selling something on eBay, taking the item to a bus stop and leaving it on the bench, then telling the buyer to go pick it up. Except that after someone takes it home, it's still there.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Actually it would be more like going to a city park and leaving a lot of food on a picnic table every day. The "front door" analogy implies you have walls and an entrance through the walls. The point to compare and contrast is exactly the right to access. I'd say the real question is did they realize that everyone *would* be entitled to access the URL by implementing their site in this specific method? Obviously their intention and what they actually did build are in conflict, but in the final analysis it is what they build, and not what they intended to build that really matters.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Brian Gordon]

I wasn't talking about law- it's probably illegal. But while Verizon may have legally assigned rights related to profit from distribution, they do not have morally assigned rights related to profit from distribution.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[DavidJSimpson]

I think the gym analogy is not accurate, because it does not require the gym operators to do anything. What I mean is this: when you are accessing a URL, your browser is sending a request to a particular server and that server is actively sending you a response to your request. You aren't technically "stealing" (I know the difference between theft and copyright infringement -- but I can't think of a better word). You are actually asking for something and they are actively sending something back to you. You cannot be responsible for what they send back to you, but you can be held responsible for how you use it.

I think the phone system would be a better analogy. If I phone a company (say Coca-Cola) and ask for their secret recipe, and the person answering the phone gives me that recipe, have I done anything wrong? If I use that recipe to make a delicious drink for myself (not for resale), have I done anything wrong? I certainly was not "hacking" the phone system because I called them.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[snl2587]

Just because you see someone accidentally leave something sitting on a park bench it doesn't mean it's moral, ethical, or possibly even legal to pick it up and walk away.

If I wasn't so against doing it I would have copied and pasted my response to this argument over and over again throughout this page. Instead, I'll paraphrase: viewing!=stealing. If you provide an online service with an open URL, expect people to find and use the open URL. They're not stealing if they visit a web page, and there is no such thing as online trespassing and there should not be.

Please limit future argument to cases that involve things online only. I don't want to hear about people leaving stuff on park benches, leaving their front doors open, etc., and you're not helping your point by including such things. They involve physical items and denying others use of such items that belong to them.

Thank you.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[knight24k]

Exactly how is it taking advantage when a corporation places in the public domain a resource without any security whatsoever. This is no different then charging admission to an art show then leaving the windows open to the street and then complaining that a newspaper publishes the fact that all the art can be seen from the street through the window. Is it then immoral to stand outside and look at the art?

A url is no different than placing something in the middle of the public square for all to see. This was akin to placing their wares in a back alley, because not many people go there but that is still out in public. If you want to restrict access to something on the internet SECURE IT! Anything that is not restricted is in the public domain by definition. You could probably access this site completely by accident as a result of a search and you would know it is supposed to be pay only how? They have only themselves to blame that this url is not secured.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Khyber]

You're missing the whole point of TFA. The man's being called a hacker when there was no hacking done - no database breaches, no information stolen. It's just a publicly accessible URL that they didn't lock down. It's the web developer's fault, not the person that stumbled upon the URL. Calling him a hacker when no hacking happened is character assassination, and it could damage this person's reputation.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[mschoolbus]

Anyone have a torrent of the link?

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[mzs]

It's silly how so many comments are strange analogies to this, but I gave a weird true story of how I almost got into a lot of trouble for going to the wrong gym.

I signed-up for a morning exercise program with the park district was was held inthe high school. It was a weights and stationary cycles type of thing. The first day that I got there I went in the 'other' door into the gym and saw an exercise room with a lot of people my age working-out in there so I went in and got into it. Later the burly high school wrestling coach came in an put me in a hold and started yelling at me. Luckily when I could breathe I started talking about my wrestling coaches that I had in nearby schools and he let go of me. Then I explained my situation and he led me to another room where the program was on the other side of the main gym. It turned-out that this room was used by the coaches and teacher in the morning before work.

He was always really nice to me after that, and we talked a bunch of times after that about wrestling from 'back then'.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[masterzora]

Umm, no. The zoo, at best, has you arrested for trespassing. Which, I could very well be wrong, but I *think* publicly available urls fall under the "not trespassing" category legally.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[brassman]

I had a little trouble getting Apache BasicAuth to work on a new page last night. (Hey, it was late, I was tired....) Did I say to myself "Eh, nobody will hit this overnight, so I'll just come back and fix it in the morning"?

No. I stayed up and fixed it. There'd be no one to blame but myself if I hadn't.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[mea37]

There is no such thing as a direct moral right to profit from anything; commerce is a construct of law.

It is immoral to do willful harm in contravention of social norms. While the commercial rights being violated are not "morally assigned", it is still not moral to subvert them deliberately.

Change the law, change the social norms (across all of society, not just the tech-aware that swim these waters), change the moral issue. Until then, I stand by my previous conclusions.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[MBGMorden]

It has never been legally permissible to enter a building without the owners consent. There is no such thing as a "public building" - buildings are private property owned by individuals, companies or the government that in some cases deal with the public. You are not allowed to simply enter a building and start using the facilities provided. Rest stops are public buildings. Open 24 hours, owned by the state (and by extension all the people of the state), and you can walk in and use the facilities freely.

Say someone opened a large facility next to an interstate with restrooms and vending machines, named it "The Rest Stop", and decided that it should be a pay facility for members at a rate of $10 per year, but made no postings alluding to this fact, and had no staff on hand to check memberships or otherwise even alert the users of the situation. Do you consider it unreasonable for a traveler to stop and use the facilities?

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Etrias]

There is nothing wrong with visiting a publicly available URL. No exceptions.

I guess you never stumbled upon a goatse or tubgirl publicly available link, then :P

Or for that matter, being RickRolled.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Like2Byte]

If you left your front door unlocked,...

And therein lies the fault of your reasoning. THERE IS NO DOOR!

The Net is open. Period. If an engineer makes the decision (or in this case a business decision) to not put up a gate with a guard then MobiTV can expect anyone to enter.

Let's step back from the "home invasion" mentality. This is a business. Most businesses allow people to enter without ID. Take a SAMS Club or COSTCO, for instance, though. The doors are open but you need a membership to buy merchandise. You can look around for free, though. And guess what? They kick *everyone* out after business hours. So, you could spend all day in the store if you wanted to; but, you'd be asked to leave at closing.

You wouldn't be allowed to buy something until you were a member; so, you could watch TV all day in the store and no one would care. Eventually, someone would probably ask you to leave and you'd have to go. Bottom line is just get a membership before you try to buy that 50" LCD.

COSTCO and SAMS Club could tell people, "No ID? Get a membership before you come back." and they'd be justified to enforce that rule to perform their business this way if it was their choice.

With MobiTV - same thing. MobiTV needs to validate their users before serving media. They control the access and they are responsible for minimizing access to paying members only to protect their share-holders.

Also, this is not a "hack". This is a copy paste job at best. Sure, the guy might know how to use Ethereal and an application (or hardware(doubtful)) to capture the data packets from a phone - that only puts him in the power-user category. Hacking security requires a lot more understanding of how MobiTV safeguards their data and maybe a method to bypass their security.
  But, none of that is being performed here - this guy simply stumbled across a URL that serves Streaming Video.

So, once again, someone's making a mountain out of a mole-hill. Plug your leak and move on.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[rhavenn]

Actually, if you didn't know what the URL was going to contain prior to clicking on it I would say clicking on publicly available links is perfectly fine. If you click the link, notice it's child pr0n and then spank off to it you've probably crossed the line. However, if you click on a random link and get an image, be it goats.ex or whatever, I would say it's up to you close the link and not visit it again. So, in this case I would say if a person gets a list of links and clicks on them to find streamable video with ads and the content itself isn't illegal then go for it. It's trivial to setup authentication systems for streams, so if you find one that's open one could assume it's meant to be free.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[blueg3]

For most state laws that I've looked at, if you encounter material that is child pornography, it is not criminal if you immediately report it and surrender it to law enforcement. This happens fairly frequently, and you only get embroiled in legal troubles if it's not clear that you happened upon the CP innocently.

It's also not a crime to be in possession of CP if you did not willfully acquire it and did not discover its presence. You may, however, have some significant legal wrangling ahead of you before that defense is accepted. (For example, one individual was found with an external hard drive containing CP on top of his computer. He claimed that he had purchased it from a neighbor and never used it. Forensic evidence corroborated this story, and so he was in the clear. His neighbor, not so much.)

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[VWJedi]

I agree that my analogy doesn't fit this situation. I provided the analogy to point out that this is one of the many "unauthorized access" debates that boils down to the question, "By default (i.e. without further information) would an average person assume this resource is public or private?"

In the gym analogy that I responded to, one would assume that a place of business with an unlocked door (during "normal business hours") is an open invitation to come inside (although actually using the equipment is questionable). In a private home, one would not normally assume that an unlocked door is an open invitation.

To rephrase my earlier post, we need to examine:

• Is the "default state" of an unsecured URL "public" or "private"?
• Did a given individual have prior knowledge that their access was unauthorized (by the content provider)?

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[poetmatt]

Lets try this again.

Does MobiTV and Verizon have the right to send a cease and desist letter? No. Enough people obviously know better.

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode15/usc_sec_15_00000687---a000-.html

That is a part of Cornell's about cease and desist.

I am wondering though, is there any guidelines for what kinds of sanctions a lawyer can receive for filing an invalid C&D?

IANAL.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Chrisq]

Yes, its more like having a poster and saying that nobody reads it. --- Anyone reading this post will be subject to a cease and desist order

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Jaysyn]

Ok, how about this. If you leave you car unlocked & the keys in it, the cops will not charge someone in the theft of said car.
At least in Florida.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[knight24k]

Exactly how am I trespassing, standing on a public street looking into the exhibit that they failed to block?

Sorry, public urls are..well...public. If they do not want people accessing them they restrict them by placing login requirements. Similarly the zoo makes sure the exhibit is not viewable from the street and forces patrons to go through the entrance and pay the admission to view the exhibit.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Blkdeath]

Say someone opened a large facility next to an interstate with restrooms and vending machines, named it

... say someone took a bad analogy and stretched it even further, charging an arbitrary fee to read it ... would you be opposed to gay marriage?

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[VWJedi]

I think the question is "Does the average person know they are not authorized to use this service?" If you walk into a business during "normal business hours", you assume that you are allowed to be there. If you find an unlocked back door to a movie theater, would you assume that you are invited to watch free movies?

I don't know what the answer is in this case, but we should at least make sure we're asking the right question.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[router]

You are the CEO of a multinational corporation. You manage the company into the ground. You are fired, but the golden handshake provision of your contract entitles you to 150M$. Money you didn't, in the strictest sense of the word, earn. Are you stealing?

Look, if I leave a sofa on the curb in San Francisco, and don't look like I am moving, it will disafsckingppear in less than an hour. The internet is no different; you make a stream avail without any protection, I tap into the stream, you don't want me to, you block it. You don't block, you are ok with it. Like leaving the sofa out, implied consent to access unprotected content/stuff.

Your argument essentially distills into having a house with glass walls in the middle of a crowded city and then complaining when people look in. Don't want observers, don't use glass walls.

andy

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[asuffield]

Is it wrong to walk into a public building? No

Is it wrong to walk into a gym where you dont have a membership and start exercising just because they dont bother to check ID's at the door? Yes

How about walking into the office of a TV station and asking the receptionist to give you a free copy of all the day's content, which she promptly does without asking any questions?

That's their own damn fault.

If you drop your wallet on the ground outside your house and leave it there overnight, you do not have moral (or legal, in most of the world) grounds to complain if somebody picks it up and walks off with it. You are responsible for taking basic care of your own stuff if you want to keep it.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[canUbeleiveIT]

There is no such thing as a direct moral right to profit from anything; commerce is a construct of law. Really? I wonder if you would feel the same way if your employer or customers refused to pay what they owe you for labor. You're not out anything more than MobiTV is, meaning your time and effort. But hey, at least those scurrilous deadbeats "gained value."

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[ShiNoKaze]

Speaking of ads, why the fuck should we feel obligated to pay for something AND watch the ads? Aren't they getting paid for the ads? Why should they get to get paid on both sides, and then bitch when we try to get it with out paying AND rip the ads out. If they want money for it, it needs to not have ads, if it has ads, it needs to be free. As far as I'm concerned if the only option they offer is pay for it AND see ads, I'll find whatever means neccessary to not pay and not see ads. Or just not watch.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[ubrgeek]

>And I'm within mine telling them to piss up a rope.

And gravity is within its rights to ... ;)

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[metamatic]

Well, looks like they've switched off qtv.mobitv.com/sprintTVlive.mcd now.

Apparently someone with a brain cell or three saw the upcoming train wreck and decided to prevent it.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[idonthack]

There are laws against posessing certain types of content, that can be referenced with a URL, but there is no law saying it is illegal to access any URL.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[STrinity]

The URL was not intended to be public and everyone involved knows this.

The web is a public network -- everything is assumed to be open to the public unless it's protected, at the very least, by a login. The fact that a someone intends for a page to be private doesn't make it so unless he does something about it. MobiTV is at fault for hiring an incompetent web designer. Period.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your analogy doesn't hold up. When you request the URL, the web server explicitly responds with a "200 OK" response code instead of "403 Forbidden" or "401 Unauthorized."

They cannot simultaneously give permission to access a resource and claim it is "hacking." Ignorance of the protocols they support is not an excuse.

This is akin to asking a cashier if you can take a penny from the "free pennies" jar and after they reply "yes," accusing you of robbery.

http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[STrinity]

The difference is that a person's garage is assumed to be private unless stated otherwise. Websites are just the opposite.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Diebold put their voting machine source code online with no protections at all.

Should voting machine code be reviewed? Yes.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[dgatwood]

Only because my employer is bound by contract to pay me. I'm not obligated to pay people who stand at the street corner and wash my car without asking me.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[sbeckstead]

>If you left your front door unlocked

Actually if you had to open the door then you have committed burglary and even if the door is left open you have committed burglary. This situation is "You build a house but fail to put up walls. You built it in the middle of a public thoroughfare and you have left your TV on." We are all standing here watching your TV.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[hondo77]

It's more like leaving your curtains open and complaining that people in the street are looking through the windows.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[AnonymousRobin]

Actually, it sort of is wrong in a moral sense, just like reading someone's diary is also wrong, even if they're extremely stupid, print it out in 100 pt font and leave it wide open in the middle of city square. The fact they did that doesn't change the fact you're reading something that you obviously should not be, or watching something that the owners clearly did not intend you to without paying.

That being said, anyone who decides to leave something that's supposed to be hidden in a place viewable by virtually the entire world is pretty stupid and should expect people to go there even if they aren't supposed to. Or especially because they aren't.

Sending a cease and desist letter is the equivalent of me then trying to stand around guarding my diary and then put restraining orders on everyone to keep them from reading it instead of realizing that hey, maybe I should do something like keep it under my bed instead or something.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[znerk]

"I feel it is unreasonable to expect the end user to determine if he or she should be paying for a service."

It takes an unhealthy dose of willful ignorance to fail to make that determination on your own. Really? To my mind, if you set your radio in your window, it's utterly ridiculous to yell at the neighbors for listening to it. I don't see a publicly available internet URL any differently.

As the parent to your post stated... if it's a pay service, it should have access controls. If it's a publicly available url, it's publicly accessible, and there's no access controls? Anyone who knows the URL can see it. Same could be said for a television on your front porch, or a radio in your window. It's available to the public, end of discuission. Secure it or shut up.

Note: I am the network administrator for a large number of installations, in a 3-state area. If my network is unsecure, it's *my* ass, not the customers'.

As to your little jab about DRM, someone ripping a disk is entirely different from someone visiting a publicly available web link. I hate to be ad hominem, here, but you're an idiot.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[hob42]

Just FYI.

The doors are open but you need a membership to buy merchandise. You can look around for free, though.

Costco won't let you enter without a membership card, so they already do restrict access as you said.

(Now, sometimes they don't pay very close attention. I went almost a whole year without them asking to see my card at the door, but they've started up again recently.)

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[jmodule]

• Is the "default state" of an unsecured URL "public" or "private"?
• Did a given individual have prior knowledge that their access was unauthorized (by the content provider)?

I thought this was a given. Since the beginning of the web, a public (i.e. internet facing) web server serves public web pages. If the pages are intended to be private, then they are put on a private server (ex: intranet) or secured with an authentication mechanism. To argue otherwise is to go against established practice.

Not linking to the page from your index (or whatever) does not change the fact that the web page has been "published" as soon as it is made available from the server.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[ArikTheRed]

Now some people might look down on Worm's mechanics, call it immoral. But as Canada Bill Jones says, it's immoral to let a sucker keep his money.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[ronark]

Ooooh. You just posted the URL. Prepare for a cease and desist letter.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Negadecimal]

Is it wrong to walk into a gym where you dont have a membership and start exercising just because they dont bother to check ID's at the door? Yes

Good analogy, but in this case, HF isn't walking into a gym; rather, they're simply pointing to a door where IDs aren't checked.

It may be criminal to use the gym without an ID, but telling someone that they can isn't.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Anarke_Incarnate]

Getting something you should not, and for free, is stealing? Wow, I hope you kept the receipt for that law education. You need a refund.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[suso]

Enough with the stupid analogies. The only analogy that really works is this example itself:

• Some person finds out that MobiTV doesn't properly protect its content and posts instructions for the whole internet to see how to exploit it to get free TV. Its clear from his post that he wants to help people watch TV without paying.
  
• A bunch of people reply back to his post saying thank you for helping them watch Live TV on their phones without paying for it.
  
• MobiTV sends cease-and-desist letter to try to remove the information from the forums that tells people how to exploit their service.
  
• Further into the future - MobiTV fixes their problem and then all the people who were stealing TV service get mad about it and look for some other place that doesn't lock down their TV service properly.
  

All the analogies in the world will not change the fact that you are aware that you are getting something that you shouldn't be. Nuff said. End of story. Goodbye.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[goldspider]

My response was solely to the GGP's assertion that people don't have enough common sense to determine when a service is free. And in some cases, granted, it's not clear.

Do you know what a courteous, respectful person does when the owner's intent is not clear? ASK!

If a neighbor appears to be disposing of an old computer by leaving it on the curb, I don't just assume it's free for anyone to take. I ask them if it's OK to take it. It doesn't take much effort, it eliminates any doubt or miscommunication, and it separates me from freeloaders and inconsiderate douchebags with a sense of entitlement.

It's like connecting to a neighbor's unsecured wireless access point without permission. Is it hacking? No. Illegal? No. Rude? Absolutely.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[X.25]

Oh wait - this is Internet, so we don't need to take any responsibility for our fucking actions.

Do you people do the same shit in real-life, then sue someone because of your stupidity?

When you fuckup in real-life, you get sued. When you fuckup on the Internet, you get to sue someone else?

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[geekoid]

"Is it wrong to walk into a gym where you dont have a membership and start exercising just because they dont bother to check ID's at the door? Yes"

no, it is not. How do I know membership is required? how do I know there not having a special? how am I suppose to secoing gues the people that run the place?. They ask me to leave at any time. However, of they didn't have anyone checking for ID's they wouldn't be able to call me a thief and trespasser. Unless I stayed after they asked me to.

Now, to make this a little more like the issue: If someone said "Hey, there is a gym over there" Could THEY becalled a thief? a criminal of any kind?

Now that said, your analogy SUCKS.

Links are DESIGNED to be used freely by people. That is their design.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[djheru]

Once again, this analogy fails. In your analogy, taking someone's beer deprives them of it. In this example, individuals who pay for the service are still able to use it.

A more apt analogy would be a theatre company that decides to perform a play in a public space. People are being charged for tickets, but if you live across the street, or happen to be walking by, would you be committing a crime if you failed to avert your eyes to avoid seeing the performance?

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Anarke_Incarnate]

However, in the case of your employer failing to pay you, there is a contract, verbal, written or implicit that dictates a rate of pay corresponding to time spent or work completed. In the case of MobiTV there is no contract associated or enforceable for the "users" of that content on an on open stream.

To make it clearer, if somebody were to put a TV in their shop window with new movies playing and say that only people who paid for it may watch and all others must leave a public sidewalk, it would be ridiculous.

They are essentially asking for that, since the internet is accessible to the public (albeit not for free like the sidewalk) and they are not taking sufficient responsibility for the restriction of viewing.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[ahecht]

They didn't shut if off, they just restricted it to IP addressed belonging to Sprint. I can still access it from my Sprint Treo.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[mea37]

Ah, the parade of false analogies is here.

"You are the CEO of a multinational corporation. You manage the company into the ground. You are fired, but the golden handshake provision of your contract entitles you to 150M$. Money you didn't, in the strictest sense of the word, earn. Are you stealing?"

The CEO indeed did not steal, but the reason isn't that the company from whom he takes the money left it unprotected; it's that they gave explicit consent that in those circumstances, he would be allowed to take that money.

By contrast, putting content on a URL you don't publish is not accepted (by society in general -- outside of technical circles -- nor by the law) as giving explicit concent for everyone to access that content. It probably should be, but it isn't.

A better analogy would be, a company has poor security policies and the account numbers for their corporate holdings fall into every employee's inbox. If employees make withdrawels, are they stealing? Yes they are.

"Look, if I leave a sofa on the curb in San Francisco, and don't look like I am moving, it will disafsckingppear in less than an hour. The internet is no different; you make a stream avail without any protection, I tap into the stream, you don't want me to, you block it. You don't block, you are ok with it. Like leaving the sofa out, implied consent to access unprotected content/stuff."

Neither restating how you'd like the social norms to be, nor citing other situations where the social norms are how you think the should be, has any connection to the discussion at hand.

Leave your car unlocked in parts of St. Louis, someobody will take your car stereo. The argument has the same logical structure as yours, yet it doesn't lead to the conclusion that taking car stereos from unlocked cars is ok. Abstraction and analogy is fine, but when you abstract away differences that matter, it's just sophistry.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[geekoid]

"I feel it is unreasonable to expect the end user to determine if he or she should be paying for a service."

It takes an unhealthy dose of willful ignorance to fail to make that determination on your own.

Becasue no one ever just gave away TV shows...

You should never expect the user to second guess your motives, OR be responsible for your screw up.

If it turned out the company that made your keyboard had broken a law, should you be held responsible?

"
And yet you're puzzled by why digital content producers try so hard to prevent their works from being 'mistakenly' acquired by people who (according to you) can't determine if they are entitled to said works for free."

No, it's not puzzling. What is puzzling iss that they expect people to bend over backwards, second guess their motives, and then be screwed over.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[yabba-dabba-do]

And they're well within their legal rights to stop you from doing so either by locking the door or guarding it physically.

Exactly, they have to enforce it. Until they enforce it, it is indeed acceptable. After hours when they lock the door, I am unable to use their bathroom.

Starbucks establishments are not public buildings. Don't ever forget that. They are private property that offer goods to the public. You do not have any more right to be there than the baristas have to be in your living room or using your bathroom.

MY living room and bathroom do not have a sign on the door saying "OPEN".

And, they have no right to tell me to "Stop telling people we have a bathroom."

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Anarke_Incarnate]

Think of it this way. The technological configuration in this case is as follows:

You, through your computer, make a request to them, through their server.

Their server responds and obliges

If this was not their intent, they screwed up. You have not "deprived" them of anything really except perhaps bandwidth. However, they have also not "kept you out"

Even in the case of trespassing, the usual implicit conditions require the posting of signs and notices of private property. Your presence on their property can damage it and if you take anything, including plant life or soil, you have deprived them of something, even if it is their serenity.

In this case, there appears to have been no marking and frankly the visibility of their site's content is the problem. The accepted practice in this context is the secure the things you do not want seen. They have not exersized their due diligence to prevent unwanted viewership. This is their own responsibility and they must deal with the issues in a technical matter.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[VWJedi]

Since the beginning of the web, a public (i.e. internet facing) web server serves public web pages. If the pages are intended to be private, then they are put on a private server (ex: intranet) or secured with an authentication mechanism. To argue otherwise is to go against established practice.

In most situations, this hold... however, if it is clear that the information was never intended to be made public, this argument falls apart. For example, if I came across an unadvertised, but still public link that provided a list of credit card numbers, would a reasonable person assume that he / she is allowed to use them?

To make matters even more complicated, if you can prove that the person knew they were not authorized to use the site, then you can't really argue about assumptions anymore.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[severoon]

Is it a hack? Not really

"Not really"? How about "no"?

Does it allow people to watch TV that they didn't pay for? Yes

Agreed on this one...

Does it prevent Verizon and MobiTV from receiving revenue that they should from the streams? Yes

Um. No, it does not prevent them from receiving revenue from the streams. All they have to do is what everyone else does...don't make it available for public consumption if you don't want to.

Is it wrong? Yes

By "it" I assume you mean people viewing the publicly available streams (as opposed to MobiTV making the stream publicly available...which is also not wrong, IMHO, if that's what they want to do let 'em do it). It is not wrong to visit a URL on the Intar-webz. It is never wrong to view content that is publicly available. Why would it be? (I suppose you could make an argument against child pornography...but even there you'd have a tough argument if I'm your opponent.)

Look, in this case MobiTV made a mistake. Someone discovered the mistake and publicized that MobiTV is inadvertently giving their content away for free. The solution here is not to shoot the messenger a cease-and-desist letter, but to fix the mistake. No harm done.

Does MobiTV and Verizon have the right to send a cease and desist letter? Sure

Sure. They have a right to send whatever they want short of letter bombs. Should the site hosting the link respond, though? No, certainly not. Linking to publicly available URLs is what the Internet's all about. We can't allow a precedent to be established that allows some company to guilelessly dump all their content into public view and then sue me for linking it on my blog. That's stupid.

See folks, whether its a hack or not doesn't change the fact that its just wrong. There are too many people freeloading nowadays. The Internet makes it so much easier to freeload. And its becoming a disease. When MobiTV fixes their stuff, I'm sure a bunch of people in these forums will yell and scream about it, but few of them will actually starting paying for the service that they started to enjoy. I do agree though that MobiTV should be ashamed of themselves for leaving their service wide open.

It must be nice in the consequence-free universe you live in. In the real world, if you make a mistake, even if you didn't intend to, there are often consequences. In this case the consequences are minor, perhaps even beneficial to MobiTV as you point out (companies often do give free trial periods to hook people—that's all this amounts to). When you refer to "freeloading" I imagine you're picturing sites like TPB. But even in that case you'd have a tough argument to make—TPB doesn't actually host any content. All they are is a directory to services hosted on people's PCs that wish to exchange information. And there are good reasons to protect the free exchange of information, even if there are illegal or unethical uses for it...much like freedom of speech, which is also about the free exchange of information without outside intervention.

Arguments like yours fail to take into account the reality of the situation. There are times when what is right and what is good and what is ethical is not enforceable in any meaningful way. In these cases, it is almost always because the either the context in which the event is occurring or the worldview in which is it perceived is fundamentally flawed. In this case, I believe the context is not flawed—the Internet is designed to link from one place to another, and technology allows prevention of linking, so there's no issue with the context of this event. That leaves only your worldview on this one.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[ShinmaWa]

Wow are you clueless.

it claims so under penalty of perjury. Cease and desist letters are just that -- letters of correspondence. They are not sworn and therefore do not fall under perjury.

Furthermore, they state they have also sent such claims to the ISP, a third-party. I think that is unsupportable and illegal, and I don't believe they have the right to do that. You can send a C&D to anyone you want over anything you want. There is nothing illegal in sending a letter making claims and demands. The first amendment is pretty clear on that point. It may be baseless or even stupid, but isn't illegal -- and they have every legal right to do it.

It's libellous[sic] It's obvious you don't know what libel is. This C&D was a private communication -- only made public by its recipient. Private communications, by definition, are never libelous.

it's barratry No it isn't. Barratry is multiple legal actions for the sole purpose to harass. So far, they've sent a single C&D (which isn't a legal action at all) and the purpose was not for harassment.

How your rant of baseless crap got +5 Informative is beyond me.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[sbeckstead]

They will charge you with theft in every civilized state in the union. Lack of self control does not absolve you of theft. Giving in to temptation should not be an excuse. Theft is theft whether you have clear access or not.

In this case we have a clear URL; which are invitations to access a resource. If you want that resource kept private then make it private or don't complain when the world (universe?) finds it and accesses it.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[mrmaster]

It's Sprint not Verizon. The link listed is pointing to the HoFo for Voyager phones under the Verizon subcategory. So it works on VZW phones but it is a Sprint Service.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[sulfur]

Is it ok to "visit" a publicly available URL that contains SQL injection string in it? It can even be hidden behind tinyurl or similar service. It actually happened to me when I clicked on a tinyurl link that redirected me to injected URL - I have their preview cookie enabled since then.

Not that I don't agree with you, but still there are some exceptions.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[VWJedi]

Your theater analogy is a good one, but it might be more accurate to say that the play is performed indoors and someone told you that they left the door unlocked after the play started. If you legitimately thought this was a free performance when you walked in, that's one thing. If you knowingly entered without paying, you committed a crime.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[T-Bone-T]

If you find a diary in the middle of the square, how do you know you shouldn't read it? People publish diaries all the time and somebody thought this might be a cool way to draw attention to it. If it says you shouldn't read it, that problem is solved. But in the case of the URL, it doesn't say you should be paying for it. The only indication that something might be wrong is the use of a somewhat obscure URL. Only casual users won't be aware of it.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Hillgiant]

• Is the "default state" of an unsecured URL "public" or "private"?

I hope that you intend this as a rhetorical question. The obvious answer is "public". Sharing information is what the internet was explicitly designed to do. If it is intended to be "private", either (a) use any of the readily available systems for creating access controls, or (b) don't put it on the web server.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[mea37]

My advice: Put the quote back in context, read it (and the context) again, and write a reply that has some connection to what I said.

For the record, I have had an employer refuse to pay me. My right to have him pay me was a legally-assigned one (not a morally-assigned one). His action in not paying me was both illegal and imoral, as he harmed me in contravention to social (and legal) norms. I hired a lawyer, and I got paid. And, I will never allow him to owe me anything again.

This is entirely consistent with my position on MobiTV -- which is that the people distributing the URL publically and those using it without paying are in the wrong. You'd know that if you actually read my posts instead of focusing on one sentence that doesn't sound right to you.

But don't let the facts get in the way of a good rant.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

However, the actual streams themselves (the urls for which were inside said original url) appear to all still be running, and quicktime plays them back nicely.

~shrug~

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Moofie]

"By contrast, putting content on a URL you don't publish..."

If the URL resolves, it has been published by the host. It's a trivial matter to make that URL not work except from an internal referrer.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Sir.Cracked]

"Does MobiTV and Verizon have the right to send a cease and desist letter? Yes. Anyone can write a letter. It means nothing."

I agree with your entire post except for this. A C&D is not simply a letter. In this case, it wasn't even just sent to the "offending" party. It was sent to their ISP, and was a legal document, sworn to be true under penalty of perjury. This could have some very real consequences, both for the sender and sendee. A legal document isn't simply speech, in a lot of ways, it's action. And a C&D, or a DMCA notice, isn't just a letter requesting you do something, it's a demand, backed by threatened legal concequences, for you or anyone else, like a skittish, lawsuit averse ISP, who dosn't go along.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[PlusFiveTroll]

It doesn't fucking matter what the intentions are of the person leaving the sofa..

BZZZT, wrong. Only the owner of the sofa can file charges of theft on on the 'thief'. I cannot file charges on you for stealing my friends car, for example.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[jonbryce]

Nobody has a legally assigned right to profit from anything. Some big corporations may behave like they do, but they don't.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Doctor_Jest]

The gym isn't a public building (but that's not the issue here). It's a private building that requires a membership to get in, and it's posted as such, you're not allowed past the entrance without a valid membership...no exceptions. You can get to the front door and open it and negotiate your membership in that private building... so yes, you're allowed in partially. But consider this.... say you happen to walk in and no sign says "members only past this point", and past the front desk because no one's there, and there's no sign that says "for members' use only"... all you're doing is going into an open building looking at the facilities. Now if you suit up and start flexing, and no one comes to tell you that you need a membership... then who's fault is that? Claiming you "broke in" and illegally used their facilities after you finish your workout is a stretch. (provided the other criteria I listed are met.) But that's just what this company's claiming with the "hack" nonsense. I don't see the claim as valid if nothing is there to tell you "hey, this isn't for anyone but the private use of "XX/YY holders." If that was on the website's page, then you're entirely correct, and the analogy works with the "membership" negotiation and posting of "members only" on the door.

This is the same thing as a public URL. If the company isn't smart enough to keep their open-to-the-public association set up to mention "going past here requires a login/payment"... why would anyone know to do it "because it's obvious" to someone working at the company?

I don't see your analogy working all that well in this case... but like everything else on Slashdot... I've not got all the info either. ;)

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

And now you've opened up the line for yet another debate.

A lot of people don't accept that the legally-assigned right to profit from (propagation of) information (1) is a distinct thing from . . . No one, I repeat no one, has nor should they have a legally-assigned right to profit. I think what you mean is a legally-assigned right to attempt to make a profit. These are two very different thing.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[bkr1_2k]

Public URLs do, in fact, imply consent because they are published (by the domain registry people) when they are created, whether you want them to be or not. Just because you put information on there you don't want public doesn't mean I'm stealing it if I view that information.

I'll grant that this is a gray area and I don't happen to think it's "morally right" to view the service, but that's not the same thing as stealing. I've had cable internet, specifically just internet, and also received television service. I informed the provider that I received tv though I wasn't paying for it and nothing was ever done to remedy the situation. After one notification, I no longer felt any need to justify my use of the television service I didn't order, but wasn't paying for either. Was I stealing?

Obviously the company in the article doesn't want people using the service, but to say those who are using it are stealing is not legally accurate, even if the moral ground is less clear.

That said, the site manager that listed the URL is under no obligation I know of (it is a public URL after all that is listed on multiple locations) to remove the link but he'd probably be wise to do so, if for no other reason than to limit time he'll have to spend in court, "guilty" or not.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[CKW]

Intent is important.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intention_(criminal)

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[jonbryce]

How do I know it isn't another youtube, or another bbc iplayer?

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Mister Whirly]

Have you never seen the sign that most businesses have displayed somewhere "We reserve the right to refuse service for any reason."? Businesses are are private property and they can prevent you from coming onto their property at any time for any reason. A business is no different than a private dwelling in this regard. I know because at a cafe I used to work at, I personally had to 86 a few jackasses, and get trespass charges against them. If they were ever to come back after being told they were not allowed there anymore,(and one of them did) all I had to do was call the police and have them arrested (which I did). They funny thing was, the guy I had arrested (in case you are wondering he deliberately pissed all over the bathroom floors/walls, and constantly bothered our regulars and said some pretty sexually crude things to a female co-worker of mine) was saying the same thing you were - "This is a public place, and you can't have me arrested just for being here!" Guess who was wrong and went to jail? The weird thing is, I know the cops explained all of this to him earlier, why he didn't believe it I have no clue.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[CopaceticOpus]

When I open a URL, there is a transaction between my computer and the host. Very roughly, it's like this:

Me: Hey, I have this URL. Can I get any content from it?
Them: Sure, here's a video for you!

So, the gym analogy would be more like this:

Me: Hey, I saw this gym here. Can I work out?
Them: Sure, come on in!

If they don't want me to come in, they just have to say no. If MobiTv couldn't be bothered to say no or check IDs at the door, they have effectively allowed me in.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[chaoticgeek]

Well this is my .02...

I kidna see it as someone standing outside my house looking in my window watching whatever I have on the TV at that moment. If I don't like that I close the blinds and tell him to leave my property. So if verizon and mobitv don't want you looking through their windows then they need to close the blinds and tell people to stay off their lawn. In this case it would be using some sort of security. Then when they actually break into it you can cry "OMG HAX!"

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[morgan_greywolf]

It doesn't fucking matter what the intentions are of the person leaving the sofa.. if you picked up the sofa - REGARDLESS OF WHY IT WAS THERE - that's theft. You obtained something you where not otherwise permitted to have. THATS THE FUCKING THEFT. Actually, it's not. Courts have consistently ruled that anything sitting out on the curb is fair game. For one, the ground in front of the curb isn't private property, it's part of what's called the 'right-of-way' -- IOW, it's, in essence, public property. Furthermore, and this is why the courts rule this way, anything sitting out on the curb is assumed to be refuse. Trash. By throwing something away, you're telling the world that you don't want it anymore. And that is implicit permission.

Anyay, whether you 'should' or 'shouldn't' have something isn't so easy to define. Just because someone is making money off of something, that doesn't mean that obtaining that something for free is wrong. Pepsi and Coke make money by putting water into bottles and selling it, yet I can get water almost anywhere for free.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[kimvette]

How is viewing something a company makes FREELY AVAILABLE in a public resource (read: the Internet) stealing?

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[mea37]

"Right to profit" is an incorrect pharsing of the concept, I admit.

But then the fact that you (and at least one other poster) jump on that wording only proves my point: Given the option, those who don't want to respect IP laws will argue about words rather than issues.

When a shop owner has goods on his shelf, he has a legally assigned right to dispose of that object. You can't take it without paying him. While this is not a "right to profit", it is the concept I was talking about.

Likewise, a copyright holder has legally assigned rights to control over the covered content. This is not a "right to profit" -- and indeed in the effective exercise of those rights he might not profit -- but it is the concept I was refering to.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[sm62704]

That analogy is flawed. The garage is private property, the internet is not. The park analogy is more accurate.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[kimvette]

Is it so hard to implement a trivial scheme such as .htaccess? That would make it obvious that it is not intended to be freely available.

Clearly when you want a DVD, you ought to buy it. This is because it is a physical medium.

Likewise, music downloads ought to be metered or password protected, but NOT encumbered to block Fair Use and interoperability. Copyright protection ought to apply there.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[squallbsr]

So, it appears to be the same as your Free TV at home (if you have a good antenna) - you know, the Ad supported kind. You watch some digital stream that has Ads, how is it unreasonable to assume that it is not ad supported and free to the public?

In the end, it all boils down to, you make something public on the internet, users assume if there is not a login, it is free. If you don't want something free on the internet, make sure you protect your URLs. How is that so hard to understand and legislate - it isn't stealing because the content provider still has their content. The only thing consumed is bandwidth and server resources, which are always provided for free on publicly accessible URLs.

If you do not want people to leech anything from your servers, you need to ensure that your PUBLIC FACING ON THE INTERNET servers protect their content.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[jroysdon]

I'm not a lawyer, this is just personal experience:

I believe you've got the law wrong. A friend some years back woke up to find a homeless person sleeping on their couch. The husband had left early in the morning for work and forgot to lock the front door. She called the police - police said to ask to him to leave - he did. They wouldn't dispatch. Unless you have posted "No Trespass" it isn't trespass. Unless you lock a door, it isn't breaking and entering.

If he had refused to leave, the police would have dispatched.

Obviously they just need to put some sort of password interface on there. Then, when someone who hasn't been given the password accesses it, they are breaking in since they shouldn't have the password (the is the same as someone making a copy of your car key - just because they have a key doesn't mean they got it legally).

The problem here is that a URL is not a key or password. They are trying to act as if it is, but it is not. If you somehow could prove that finding a URL you were not meant to have was the same as copying someone's key illegally, they'd have a point. However, I don't think in this day and age that's ever going to be true. Too many times I get emails from friends and family and go there and share it with others. No one sees this as copying a key and giving access.

Put a password on it, and it is clear anyone trying to access would be in trouble if they shouldn't be accessing it.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[alan_dershowitz]

It isn't totally an issue of security, it's of relying on the rules of society that all civilized grownups are aware of. For the convenience of everyone, most places will give you the benefit of the doubt if you look like you're doing what you're supposed to be doing. My gym doesn't check the fingerprints of everyone who walks through the door because by and large they expect people not to be assholes and take advantage of a system that is intentionally left simple. They want to get along with you, they want to trust you, they want to make their lives and your lives simpler.

Isn't that what Slashdot pisses and moans about that all companies should be doing? Yet there is always a contention on Slashdot between people that complain about how businesses and government don't trust them and spy on them and make excessive regulations, and the people on Slashdot that think that if something's not nailed down you are perfectly within your rights to take it because there wasn't a chain and a sign that said "DON'T STEAL PARK BENCHES."

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's clueless posts like this that prove a low UID on /. is meaningless. I'm actually glad that I used all of my mod points because I would have wasted a -1 troll on you.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[KlomDark]

I run my access point completely unsecured. I don't find it rude at all when people use it.

How do you know if your neighbor minds? Hell, I could be your neighbor.

If I put an old computer on the curb, it's free for the taking. It would be quite stupid to assume otherwise. And the law says your trash is public property once it's set out on the curb.

I see your argument running out of propellant.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

But posting the location of the sofa on the internet is not theft and doubtfully illegal.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Bogtha]

They are not sworn and therefore do not fall under perjury.

Did you even bother reading the letter? I quote: "MobiTV hereby states, under penalty of perjury, that the above notice is accurate". It was a DMCA takedown notice. The DMCA requires takedown notices to be made under penalty of perjury.

I get the impression you think perjury is only applicable if somebody is sworn in as a witness in court. That's simply not the case. Why do you think laws like the DMCA include statements like this?

It's libellous[sic]

What's with the [sic]? That's spelt correctly.

There is nothing illegal in sending a letter making claims and demands.

I do believe that's what I said. In fact, I explicitly said that the problem was that it was more than simply a letter with demands.

It's obvious you don't know what libel is. This C&D was a private communication

It's obvious you didn't read my comment or the letter. They stated that they were also contacting the ISP about this.

it's barratry

Way to misquote me. The full quote is "If they take it any further, it's barratry".

So far, they've sent a single C&D (which isn't a legal action at all)

A DMCA takedown notice isn't legal action? The fact that they threaten "further" legal action certainly suggests they think it is legal action.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[steelfood]

It has never been legally permissible to enter a building without the owners consent.

Bullshit. If you open your storefront for business, there is an implied consent for entry into your business. You are allowed to kick people out, to ban them outright. But you cannot sue people for tresspassing the moment they enter. You need "no tresspassing" signs, and at least a damn door.

I'm not going to bother responding to the rest of your post since it's just a rant about how you want the damn kids off your lawn.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Casualposter]

TV delivered to your phone costs money if you use service X. You can watch TV for free with a TV. This isn't stealing anymore than taping a show on ABC is stealing. MobilTV wants to add a charge to free TV to cover the convenience of having it delivered to your phone. They do so in such a way that everyone can use the service without much trouble.

Incredibly stupid business decisions should not be protected with a C&D to remove an entire forum thread. Free societies have already established that telling someone how to do something illegal is NOT the same as doing it. I can teach you how to circumvent security and not break any laws. If you use that knowledge to rob a bank, the crime is robbery and you will go to jail. I'm not going to be culpable for merely providing you with information on how security systems work. If people post about taking something that is a paid for service, then that is evidence of a crime, but the forum thread is protected speech.

Stealing is ingrained into our species. We steal when we can get away with it and always have. People steal on an individual level and on a group level. You are deluded if you think that theft will ever vanish from our species-it has provided an advantage to us for far too long. (Nations invade and conquer, thus stealing the land and resources of their neighbor; American settlers in the late 1800's "squatted" on public land and converted it into private holdings in violation of the law; Corporations regularly violate the law for economic or political gain as Enron and AT&T are both examples as is Microsoft.) These behaviors are neither unique to our times nor represent some sort of "moral decay" in human society. Nor do I suspect will such behaviors have any impact upon how our species will respond to any looming crises: We will do what we always do: fight, kill, steal, and generally survive. Those that are unwilling to do what ever it takes to survive a massive crisis will die. Same shit different century.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[insane_machine]

That is incorrect, I was able to access the file by changing my User Agent to Google Bot (first one I tried). Let's start another illegal vs immoral argument or even if it hacking.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[g2devi]

> It takes an unhealthy dose of willful ignorance to fail to make that determination on your own.

Don't Americans have free community centers? If so, I don't see how you could know that an open gym is for members only unless, at minimum, they explicitly put up signs everywhere that "Only paying users can use the gym -- we use the honour system so please only use the gym if you drop a dollar in the hat at the entrance and please don't steal the hat!".

In some communities, it's okay and even encouraged to walk into a house that has it's doors open (as long as you respect closed doors). It's called being neighbourly.
In other communities, even entering into the front gate will get you shot. It's called respecting private properly.

In the internet, most unencrypted content is free. *That* is the community standard of the internet.

> Do you know what a courteous, respectful person does when the owner's intent is not clear? ASK!

Very true, but let's put it another way. You're in a country that allows you to go to the beach in western swimwear or you're near an ultraconservative commune where even showing your navel is forbidden.
You see an empty beach, but there's no sign telling you if the beach a nude beach where clothing is forbidden or ultraconservative beach where victorian dress is the minimum.
All you see is the beach. Do you:
a) Go to the houses near the beach and ask them, thus taking people away from whatever they're doing for a pointless question the way door-to-door pollsters do?
b) Use the beach the way you'd use any other clothing required beach, thus not bothering people with likely useless questions?

I personally don't know how the internet could work if you had to send an email every time you wanted to visit a site.
I know *I'd* never put up a site if I received and had to respond to such spammed email for every potential visit of each of my web pages.

And I doubt your *really* believe this doctrine, because if you did, you'd never:
a) Use and ad-blocker (which funds the web site) without first checking with the web site if it's okay
b) Never skip over commercials (which funds the programs on TV) without first checking TV networks if it's okay

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[g0at]

Public URLs do, in fact, imply consent because they are published (by the domain registry people) when they are created, whether you want them to be or not.

It sounds like you are confusing "URL" with "domain name".

-ben

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Blkdeath]

I'm not going to bother responding to the rest of your post since it's just a rant about how you want the damn kids off your lawn.

Oh I'm sorry, did I offend you? As an under-30 who's worked for everything I have in life and compensated everybody I've ever received goods and services from I can understand why you'd be so flip.

Sucks when what you consider "freedom" is considered by others to be freeloading, doesn't it? The truth is a tough pill to swallow, and I know I'll be modded to hell for it because of the infamous groupthink around here, but what the hell; I can sleep at night with a clear conscience.

Oh, and my karma is fully intact; I have mod points as I type this, so I'm not worried about a little downmodding or accusations of being a troll. Hit me with everything you've got you bunch of leeches and parasites.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

The people on that forum know that they are getting something for free that they shouldn't be. That's called stealing.

No, it is most definitely not stealing, because there really is no way to know if they "shouldn't be" getting the content.

If my cable company forgets to encrypt all their channels and I can view some that I do not pay for, then I'm not stealing, because there is absolutely no way to know if I am "authorized". Likewise, with a public URL and no encryption, there is no way to know who is "authorized".

Using the required-by-/. car analogy, if you purchased a new car and find that is has some feature that you never requested but you did not pay extra for that feature, are you stealing? You can't know, because it could be free with whatever other options you paid for. Since people viewing the MobiTV stream have paid for their Internet connection, maybe that's a free bonus. This isn't as far-fetched as it sounds, as I just found out that ESPN360 (live streaming TV) is free to me as a Verizon FIOS subscriber. Before that, I thought it was a "for pay" ESPN product, and just assumed there was some sort of free promotion going on.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[AnonymousRobin]

Kind of like how if I find boxes of books in front of a bookstore in a public area, I can take it so long as there aren't any signs saying not to? I mean, maybe they wanted to encourage literacy. No offense, but I'd hate to be your kid if you thought going through diaries was OK so long as there wasn't a big warning label on the front cover.

It should be equally obvious that a company who sells this stuff wouldn't randomly provide all of it for free at the same time with the exact same product, although admittedly, it is a bit less obvious with the site than with a pile of books in front of a bookstore, so I can at least partially agree on that point. Still clear, at least to me, though.

Regardless, I still think they're retards for putting it up on a public site.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Really, I'd replace you 2nd question with a more central one:

• Does the content provider have the right to "unaurhorize" someone from accessing a public, unsecured URL.

I'd argue that intent to "unauthorize" and the right to "unauthorize" are two independent factors. This latter must preexist in order for it to make sense to ask, "Did a given individual have prior knowledge that their access was unauthorized (by the content provider)?"

From my point of view, it seems there is no tenable argument that concludes the content provider has any right to limit access. Therefor their "intent" to do so is not relevant.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[SanityInAnarchy]

See folks, whether its a hack or not doesn't change the fact that its just wrong. There are too many people freeloading nowadays. The Internet makes it so much easier to freeload.

Guess what else the Internet makes it easy to do? Secure your own site!

So let's try this one:

Should Verizon and MobiTV receive revenue if they can't even lock down their own service? Maybe, being charitable.

Is it anyone's responsibility but Verizon and MobiTV to lock down their service? No.

When MobiTV fixes their stuff, I'm sure a bunch of people in these forums will yell and scream about it, but few of them will actually starting paying for the service that they started to enjoy.

If that's true, maybe the service wasn't actually worth what people are paying for it?

And you know what? I bet no one will say a word, other than "Oh, well, damn. They fixed it." Again, if they don't start paying for it, that should tell you something about how little they value that service. And if some do, then this little security breach was a net win -- it was some cheap advertising.

If someone found a link like that in a service I control, I'd shut the service down temporarily until it could be fixed. I wouldn't spam C&D letters to people who dared to point it out.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[canUbeleiveIT]

You're obsfucating. By stating that there is no "moral right to profit from anything", you made a statement that overarches the context of the discussion, and it is to that statement that I replied. You simply cannot introduce an element as a basic principle to buttress your argument and then simply retreat back to the shelter of the original context of the discussion. You asserted something as a principle, so the onus is on you to defend it.

But--for the record--I don't necessarily think that either of the two distinct groups are necessarily wrong, especially those distributing it. Given my own ethical framework, I personally wouldn't use it without paying, but to say that someone can't pass on the URL is ridiculous.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[civilizedINTENSITY]

An illegally obtained list of private information, or kiddie porn, or any other sort of illegal material would be accorded special status due to the nature of the content. In order to fit the metaphor to the article, one must assume that legal material was viewable. The question then becomes, if I put up a billboard in Times Square, can I require that only paid registered pedestrians can *look* at the content? Seems like that has to require a resounding, "hell, no!"

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[jstmehr4u3]

Isn't this just security through obscurity? When google clarifies the obscure part, isn't it just open?

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Sorry, this analogy doesn't work. In most cases, it is ludicrously simple to restrict access to a URL. Checking IDs for a private gym actually costs money, as you need someone there to watch the door, and a security system, etc.

Also, the private gym usually has a sign on the door that says "private". We generally consider a password prompt, at the very least, to take the place of that sign.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[freeweed]

Most zoos have some perimeter displays you can see from the street or a sidewalk. For free. I've often walked by my local zoo and stopped for a minute or two to watch the animals. I inevitably say the following Simpson's quote:

"Hey! They're learning for free! Get them!"

If you didn't find that joke funny when the Simpsons did it, you likely consider what I do stealing.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Toonol]

They made it publicly available. It's the same as watching an HBO broadcast in a store window. If you do something silly in a public location, the public cannot be blamed for viewing it.

Or, even better; there used to be a hill you could sit on in this town that let you watch over the fence into a drive-in movie screen. Is that theft? No; it's just spillover, a consequence of where the theater was located. They are broadcasting into the public space. They could have raised the fence another twenty feet to fix the problem, but they didn't care enough to.

This site could have restricted the accessibility of the URL, but didn't care enough to.

Plus, as a practical matter, they are now the latest idiot of the week on the internet. There is no way this will work out in their favor.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[VWJedi]

The basic principal behind intellectual property law is that the content provider has the right to limit access. The fact that they have spectacularly and publicly failed to do so does not diminish that right.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[jgarra23]

How is it wrong to just visit a completely public URL? If they're losing money it's their fault; you can't just say that verizon losing money is wrong. How is that wrong? We're gaining value. Nothing has been destroyed here. This situation is purely verizon's affiliate being lazy and insecure, and you're just stupid for thinking it's wrong to take advantage of that.


So if a mentally challenged person leaves their front door open by your logic it is okay to walk into their living room & watch tv for the afternoon after all, nothing was destroyed!

I fear people who use this train of thought because they are either sociopaths or are so immature they have no ethics whatsoever. I sincerely hope you learn better than this.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[lkeagle]

Sorry, I still don't buy it. I think your analogy is worse than the one you're complaining about.

The question is whether URLs are public. I believe they are, and none of the arguments I've heard so far have compelled me to believe otherwise.

You want bad analogy? Here you go:

The internet is like a public park. Your website is like a public drinking fountain. It's only purpose is to supply water, or in the web world, information. It's not the thirsty people's fault that someone made their drinking fountain out of gold and that it spits out champagne instead of water...

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[VWJedi]

Presuming the creator of the content still holds the copyright to it, they have not given you license to download and use it. If it can be proven that you knew this (e.g. because you went to a web site that told you about it), then you can't really argue that you thought you were granted access to it.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[gratemyl]

"Score:-1, Funny" - I laughed my ... - oh, wait, this is /.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[RowD1]

This is akin to a cable company handing you a converter box that gets all the premium channels and doesn't have the capability of blocking them via subscriber authentication, even when you don't want to pay for them. Here's to hoping you won't find the channels, and if you do, that if they say so, you won't watch them, scout's honor. Oh, and if you do happen to notice that the channels are available, they'll sue, thus assuring that everyone on the planet knows what they are and how to get them. How stupid can they be?

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[TheRecklessWanderer]

In a country where someone can spill hot coffee on themselves and win a lawsuit because the coffee was hot , please define an unhealthy dose of willful ignorance.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[DavidTC]

Exactly.

It'd be one thing if this was private information. If I found out I could view students grades at some school by changing URLs, that's somewhat unethical, just like sitting in a public tree and staring into people's bedrooms is unethical.

But watching something that's provided for others? Hell no. Didn't various baseball stadiums have the 'problem' that you could watch them from nearby rooftops? Didn't they sue and lose?

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[mr_mischief]

A website isn't a private home. Your analogy is a complete failure. It's more like saying that my big-screen TV on my front porch can't be watched by anyone. Nobody set up a proxy into a private network nor did they give away a password. TFA doesn't talk about poor encryption or an obvious password. I didn't even notice anywhere it said that the site streaming the video had a proprietary content advisory. If something is made publicly accessible and not advertised, it's still publicly available.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Lummoxx]

The internet home analogy is broke. Just like darn near all analogies around here...anyway. The internet is a public place. Every URL on the internet is a public URL. Every single one. It's the nature of the network. It is up to the owner of the URL to ensure that, if required, those who visit it are not able to access more than the URL owner desires. This debate is stupid.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Vancorps]

Actually it sounds like you think there is an inherent difference. A URL even if it is just an IP address resolves to an owner just like a domain name would. Ping -a and whois the result. If the endpoint blocks reverse lookup then you just go to the last point which didn't and recover from there. It's quite easy. There are even products which automate all this for you.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with the entire 'door' analogy is that it isn't an entrance, it's a URL.

A better analogy is a line of buttons and windows. When a button is pushed one of the following happens:

1. Nothing.
2. Someone inside asks for a password. If the correct password is given, the window opens and a copy of something is given.
3. A copy of something is given without asking for a password.

In such a system, merely pushing the buttons cannot be said to be unethical. The entire system is designed so the people who install the buttons can decide how the window responds. The people pushing the buttons may not even know what the button they are pushing is supposed to do. However, there in cases where it is known what a button should be doing and taking advantage of it, this may be unethical.

Regardless of the ethicality of knowingly pushing a broken button, there is societal value in such an action. It provides motivation for the button owner to fix the problem with the button. While a button owner is certainly within his or her rights to send a cease and desist letter to anyone pointing out the location of the button, this is a poor course of action. First, it does not resolve the issue with the button. Second, it goes against the design of the system. Third, it places the button owner's burden onto the button pushers.

The button owner is completely in control of how the window responds. At any time they are free to disable or change the behavior of the button. By sending a cease and desist letter they are attempting to force others to resolve their problem. It is an understandable measure that is hopefully only used as a stop gap so they do not have to disable the button entirely until they fix the problem. However, supporting this action in law places an unnecessary burden on button pushers and removes a lot of the motivation for button owners to fix their buttons.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[DavidTC]

Exactly, and some people here, and the courts, need this pounded into their head.

All traffic on the internet is consensual bi-directional. A computer asks another computer to do something, and the second computer does it.

There are only two ways to actually crack machines and get something you shouldn't. 1) Lying about who you are to the other computer, aka, using stolen or guessed accounts and passwords. 2) Sending badly formed data that causes the other computer to make mistakes. Those two things should be, and are, illegal, along with deliberately overloading a computer or network.

Anything else should be, and must be for the internet to work, entirely legal. We cannot be required to 'ask permission', or, rather, we are already required to ask permission, using our damn computers to ask their computers! That's how we get permission, we don't need some sort of extra level of permission.

This is why every single real world analogy breaks. If this was a trespassing analogy, it would be one where every single square yard of the ground was painted with either a 'no trespassing' or 'enter at will' message. And there were a bunch of idiots claiming that there were people trespassing on ground that was painted 'enter at will', because they're too damn stupid to repaint, or only painted a few squares near the door and didn't expect people to wander in from the side.

I'm sorry that technical ineptness on the part of many companies and people has caused them to set their computer computers where the computer will wrongly agree to do things, but, really, tough shit. Even the crappiest password protection will keep most people out and turn the remainder into actual criminals.

Incidentally, Coke's recipe is a trade secret, not a copyright. (You can't copyright recipes anyway.) Trade secrets are only protected from theft and NDA violations. If a company just hands it out willy-nilly, they can't claim any damages if people use it. So if you discovered Coke's recipe like that, aka, legally, you could bottle it and sell it all you want. (Except you couldn't, as part of the ingredients are de-cocained coca leaves and only one plant in the US can legally make them and they're in bed with Coke.)

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[jgarra23]

A website isn't a private home. Your analogy is a complete failure.

Rather your argument is a complete failure.
definition for an analogy:an inference that if things agree in some respects they probably agree in others.

A website doesn't have to be a "private home" as you say to make the analogy work. To learn more about proper & effective logical arguments I suggest you read Plato, The Republic. It's a great book with effective & unrelated analogies and logical progression.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[jgarra23]

The internet home analogy is broke. Just like darn near all analogies around here...anyway.

That is not the analogy. The inference is between the home & website, both which are the property of the respective owners hence, the analogy is not broke.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[alfredo]

Along with the code was the password. I believe the password was 1111, or something similar.

Yes, the code should be open source.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[schlick]

There is no such thing as a legally assigned right to profit. Copyright is a legally assigned right to control* copying. In this case mobitv.com is not placing any controls (because they are stupid) on the copying of this information. You can't put something on an unsecured website and then tell people not to access it.

*with that control you can choose to try and profit, or you can place other restrictions such as the GPL.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[BlazeMiskulin]

"For most state laws that I've looked at, if you encounter material that is child pornography, it is not criminal if you immediately report it and surrender it to law enforcement." Not to get off topic, but... I have a friend sitting in prison right now who, I believe, would like to disagree with you on that.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, I go to a free gym every Saturday to train; the name is the Black and Williams Neighborhood Center just in case you think I'm bullshitting.

You should expect to get a letter from the legal counsel of the Black and Williams Neighborhood Center soon. Don't you see that you have committed the same offense as Howard? You have some nerve, you free public service outer!

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[WNight]

I don't think this has anything to do with DRM...

DRM is about restricting your rights and ability to use something you own. Had they 'protected' this it would just be passwording a URL because nobody has an inherent right to watch the show. (Merely a right to go to any URL and view anything it displays, which may be a show, or may be a 'click here to buy access' notice.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[blueg3]

There could be some odd states out there, but I've looked at a number of states' laws on possession of CP. I've also mentioned a single case where someone is not in jail for simply possessing against their knowledge, and you've mentioned a single case where someone has. You didn't copy, however, my note that you could get in serious legal trouble if it's not clear that you didn't come by this material innocently. There's always the possibility that there is evidence your friend willfully downloaded the material and no evidence to the contrary, or that your friend is guilty.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[WNight]

I think you're confused. DRM is what companies do to things they sell you. They're like a lock on part of the product that they don't even unlock when you buy it.

If they used DRM everyone could still view it, but wouldn't be able (theoretically) to make excerpts for quoting, etc.

Here nobody (of the viewers) owns the product so it would be reasonable for them to password it. But that's a lot different than DRM.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[WNight]

Sure. And the webserver is your property. And your property sent me a copy of your webpage.

You really don't get the point of a public URL. It's like a phone number. There's no law against calling a phone number, even if the answering machine is playing copyright songs.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[LordLucless]

And yet you're puzzled by why digital content producers try so hard to prevent their works

The whole point of this article is they didn't work hard. They didn't work at all. They broadcast their stuff worldwide, and when someone looked at it, they turned to legal threats.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[jgarra23]

You really don't get the point of a public URL. It's like a phone number. There's no law against calling a phone number, even if the answering machine is playing copyright songs.

Again you are missing the point, the point isn't the use of said URL but rather the ABUSE of it. It IS against the law to abuse phone numbers, it is against the law to abuse someone's private property, it is against the law to abuse someone's webserver, even if it is publicly available. At least in the US it is... I don't know where you're at so the laws may be different there...

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[khellendros1984]

In this case, the freeloaders are taking bandwidth, which won't be available to customers that need it. Usually, I would say "copyright infringement", but this is an actual theft of service. If someone left their house door open, then it's "unlocked" and "freely accessible", but no one would argue that walking in and taking something without the owner's knowledge was wrong. There is no difference in this case.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[khellendros1984]

In which case they would be within their rights to summon the police. It's theft; in this case, not only theft of service, but also of bandwidth (which presents a measurable cost to the company).

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[John Whitley]

Is it wrong to walk into a gym where you dont have a membership and start exercising just because they dont bother to check ID's at the door? Yes

This is the same thing. It is not wrong to visit a URL. It is wrong to use a pay-service that you are not paying for. No, it isn't the same thing; your analogy is bankrupt. The gym in your example is (presumably) private property, and the unauthorized person who just walks in is a trespasser. The internet is a public space. One cannot trespass in a public space, by definition. Failure to deeply understand the internet as public space leads to all sorts of unsupportable mayhem, such as folks claiming that access to a URL is a "hack", others trying to turn the internet into a "safe, clean space" for their children to wander unattended, etc.

To the original topic: putting a resource on a publicly available URL is an explicit act of publication to the Internet-at-large. I.e. into a vast public forum. The method of discovery of that URL is immaterial -- you could link to it, publish it in the Times, scrawl it on bathroom walls, or let people guess it exists.

If one wants to publish restricted access information via the Internet, then explicit action must be taken to protect it. There are a sea of approaches of varying application and merit, using authentication, encryption, exchange of secret ducks, you name it. But it's the publisher's responsbility to pick one and use it, or else pay for and use a non-public channel.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[ehrichweiss]

I know, I know. I'm probably going to catch hell for talking about the "free" trash collection we have here as well but what can I say, I live dangerously.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

You, sir, are an impossible tool. When thay start taxing the air, I have no doubt that you will be one of the stooges, the happy stooges, suffocating babies who fail to have their papers in order when you arrive to make oxygen checks. Christ, what the fuck is wrong with your "under-30" sorry ass?

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[pfleming]

I like the free or open range concept of "property" and whether anyone has the "right" to walk on your property. Here in Arizona the law (physical) says that if don't want animals grazing on your land (people wandering around) you need to fence them out. If you fail to properly fence them out, then they have free range on your land - can eat your grass, etc. That doesn't mean anyone can just wander all over your land(site) just the parts that aren't fenced off.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[penguin king]

Personally I think this debate is way off the point. The FA doesn't appear to be much to do with the legality of watching the stream, it's more to do with the legality of posting instructions to watch it. Personally I think if it's a publically available url, it's got incredible potential to be documented! In theory if I started a script that explored with wget http://url.com/xxxx where xxxx is every possible permutation of allowable characters of undefined length, I'd eventually find this "secret url", thus it was available to everyone. It kinda seems akin to the Colonel putting his 11 herbs and spices in a special recipe book, taking it to a library, hiding it on a shelf, and when someone finds it and writes other people instructions for finding it, attacks them for giving directions to a copyright (or whatever, perhaps a bad example).

Surely security by obscurity isn't going to work for them? They can insist it's removed from one forum, but it'll appear somewhere else. I think it's just poor form and they're gonna have to spend some time securing it!

Just my $0.016

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Torvaun]

It could have been legitimate. Plenty of channels are making their shows available (for free) through their websites. Normally you have to wait a day, so this could have just been an aggressive marketing technique. Up until the lawyers came out, there's really no way of knowing if the whole thing was intentional or not.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

meatspace..

The 90s called and they want their terminology back. Bring them this joke when you get there. Someone's probably got a mullet you can borrow for the.. oh, I see you've got your own. Carry on then.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[StikyPad]

Now there's something you wouldn't want to yell on a crowded street.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Joe U]

The URL was not intended to be public and everyone involved knows this Actually, I didn't. Please tell me where in the URL where it's marked as not public?

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[goldspider]

That's all well and good of you to do that, but that doesn't mean that everyone should just assume they have permission.

Your neighbor who simply unknowingly left his AP open may not be so generous, and would be irritated to find people have been freeloading off his service. That's not unreasonable either.

I guess things like asking permission and common courtesy are just passe anymore. Definitely a sign of this latest generation that has grown up with little respect for other people's property.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[goldspider]

And you know how you could have avoided all of that?

By asking someone.

You really shouldn't be surprised to get that kind of reaction when you simply assume permission like that.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Ngarrang]

No. Read my other comment in this thread and stop extrapolating. That would be so contradictory to standard Slashdot Policy section 18.2.3c

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[smellotron]

Kind of like how if I find boxes of books in front of a bookstore in a public area, I can take it so long as there aren't any signs saying not to?

I always get the feeling that when bookstores put out those boxes of books on the sidewalk, there's a big invisible sign saying "please take these". It's always the crap that nobody cares about! After all, it is indeed possible for something to have such a low value that the shopkeeper would rather give it away (thereby generating goodwill and maybe a bonus sale in the future) than attempt to sell it for a nickel (thereby sending the message, "hi, we sell crappy stuff").

Not that I've ever taken any books out of those piles myself, but I wouldn't consider it such a travesty as you describe.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[smellotron]

A better analogy would be, a company has poor security policies and the account numbers for their corporate holdings fall into every employee's inbox. If employees make withdrawels, are they stealing? Yes they are.

Leave your car unlocked in parts of St. Louis, someobody will take your car stereo.

Both of these analogies involve physical theft. If I take your radio, or if I withdraw money from your account, you no longer have that item/money. While bandwidth is not free, using the WWW the way it was intended by downloading the content available at a publicly-accessible URL is not in the same ballpark. Morally, if those people knew the URL was intended to be private, they are guilty of freeloading, but it's certainly not equatable to theft.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[smellotron]

Pepsi and Coke make money by putting water into bottles and selling it, yet I can get water almost anywhere for free.

Stop, Thief!

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[smellotron]

In this case, the freeloaders are taking bandwidth, which won't be available to customers that need it. Usually, I would say "copyright infringement", but this is an actual theft of service. If someone left their house door open, then it's "unlocked" and "freely accessible", but no one would argue that walking in and taking something without the owner's knowledge was wrong. There is no difference in this case.

I fail to see how using someone's bandwidth constitutes theft... even a DDoS would seem to fall more under harassment than actual theft. So really, your analogy makes much more sense as, "I left my front door unlocked so my friends could get in, but now so many strangers are going in and out of my door that my friends are stuck out on the porch!" As a bonus, it's more entertaining to imagine about a denial-of-service attack on a doorway.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[rebullandvodka]

Hey MobiTV, send me some of your packets? Sure thing - here ya go!

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[smallfries]

Erm WTF? The inherent difference that you are missing is that a domain name is an alias for an IP address whereas a Uniform Resource Locator is the address of a resource offered by a particular domain. Just because most URLs don't feature a path, contain only a domain name and resolve implicitly to the root of the namespace on the server does make them equivalent to domain names.

Given that the entire context of this discussion is that someone tried to hide a resource by not publishing the URL,and we can infer from this that the obscurity was in the path/filename part rather than the host, then you are talking complete shit.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[tkinnun0]

And therein lies the fault of your reasoning. THERE IS NO DOOR!

The Net is open. Period. If an engineer makes the decision (or in this case a business decision) to not put up a gate with a guard then MobiTV can expect anyone to enter. Let me see if I got that right, Senator Stevens, on the Internet there is no door but there may be a gate?

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[ccollao]

Leave your car unlocked in parts of St. Louis, someobody will take your car stereo. The argument has the same logical structure as yours, yet it doesn't lead to the conclusion that taking car stereos from unlocked cars is ok. Abstraction and analogy is fine, but when you abstract away differences that matter, it's just sophistry.

Keeping the line of "Capitalism", if you left your car unlocked (and with no alarm) and you get stolen your car radio, you dont' get the money from the insurance company, because it was your flaw. In the case of The public available URL, is the same analogy of leaving the car opened...It might be illegal from the ones that are getting "free" content, but it's the company's fault for not secure it properly.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[civilizedINTENSITY]

If they paid a radio station to broadcast their music, could they use copyright to force "non-members" to not listen to the station while their song played?

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[civilizedINTENSITY]

I don't "think" I was granted access to it, I *was* granted access to it. That is my point. You can't "prove" I knew I had no right to look at a billboard posted in Times Square exactly because it is ridiculous on the face of it to suggest anything publicly posted was ever meant to be selectively viewed. If I go to times square because someone told me about the billboard there, and I knew the copyright owners wanted to pretend to a right to make 90% of the street crowd look away from their sign, I'd still have every right to go look at it. And I probably would. Just to laugh at such a stupid circumstance.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[laffer1]

Accessing the stream can stop paying customers. Why? Bandwidth costs. If this were a story about spam, everyone would be going nuts about bandwidth costs. Streaming multimedia uses a lot of bandwidth, and that costs the company a lot more money.

I don't think it's "hacking" to post a public url, and I think posts regarding moral issues with using it are correct. Bandwidth and CPU resources are limited.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[WNight]

But who says you're abusing it? If the server is configured to give you a response, why should you think that it's not intended?

They obviously had to intend to install the servers, and encode the shows, configure the webserver, etc.

There's no reason for anyone who views this to assume that it isn't intentional. Many sites let you view their content without ads (printable pages, etc) because at least you're not with a competitor. And even if it didn't make business sense, why is that the customer's responsibility to assess?

All they had to do was call the system administrators and tell them to lock down that URL to anyone with an "I've viewed ads cookie", or whatever else they want.

Why aren't they expected to do this? Why is this the viewer's problem when they should just stop providing what they don't want to provide?

Imagine a company with separate a storefront. Management runs a free widget day every now and then when a supplier has overstock or wants publicity. Salespeople happily distribute these free products to drive sales of related products.

Now imagine that the managers mistype a stock number and instead of giving away mice, the store is giving away laptops. Anyone who got a free laptop (and thinks it's just an insane giveaway day) rightly calls their friends to let them know, etc.

What should the hypothetical managers do when they realize this? Send police to the store to arrest anyone attempting to receive a free laptop? Try to censor message boards about the supposed free laptop day? Or maybe call the store and tell them not to distribute free laptops?

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[samkass]

Your straw-man argument that if it doesn't deny someone else use of it, it isn't "stealing" is against the definition of "steal". Look up the definition of "steal". If you have bits sent to you that someone else has to pay to transmit in a way that circumvents that person's compensation, you're stealing.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Capt. Cautious]

To Begin: Morals are based upon religious values. Issue of "Right & Wrong" are only partially moral issues as the concept of law also applies here. It is equally legal to access a publicly listed url for a porn site as it is to access ANY other url that is "public". By public, I mean that the URL does not have anything that indicates it is a restricted URL. There are two primary issues her and neither is the issue of access.
          Since the owners of said URL are claiming a "Hack"( ludicrous on the face of it )they are creating the tort of Defamation of Character which is actionable. The putative owner made no attempt to protect access to that URL, relying on security through obscurity. ( Their Bad )
There can not be a "Morals" issue unless the individual's ethical matrix includes, "the access of a public URL is not morally correct."
            After doing a bit of research I discovered that in the "...absence of any security measures... the site in question is considered in the public domain." Thus no illegality, No Hack, no misconduct. In addition by bringing this to the owners attention through pointing to the URL he is guilty only of a similar act that security experts do in different ways: Notify the company.
Have fun :)

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

There the wrong one would be the one who published it. At least more than the one who view it.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[AnonymousRobin]

I see what I did wrong now. Sorry, forgot this was Slashdot. I used the wrong analogy. OK, let's say you have a car with the keys on the seat in a parking lot...

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[snl2587]

Working (somewhat) backwards:

If you have bits sent to you that someone else has to pay to transmit in a way that circumvents that person's compensation, you're stealing.

...once again, no I would not be in this case. It is an open URL. You're right in a way, but you would be broadening the argument beyond open URLs.

Your straw-man argument that if it doesn't deny someone else use of it, it isn't "stealing" is against the definition of "steal". Look up the definition of "steal".

And you shouldn't throw around "straw-man". How could it be a misrepresentation of my opponents argument if it was my own argument? The rest of your statement, however, is a straw-man based on mine.

And I, of course, know the definitions of "steal". As it happens there are a lot of them. See how it applies to the online setting.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[mr_mischief]

Gee, which one of the two translations I have at home should I reread to know you're a complete ass? The Bloom or the Griffith and Ferrari?

You analogy falls down not because you're defensive and come back with what you think is a witty reply about my lack of reading comprehension (BTW, did you score perfectly on the reading comprehension section of the ACT? I did.). It falls down because a published resource in no way analogizes to an enclosed portion of a private home.

A web site that's not protected by a firewall, password, or limited access notice is more like an outdoor garden than a living room. If you stick a TV on a cart out among the gardenias, don't blame someone for watching it through your wrought-iron fence.

Did you know there are apartment buildings surrounding Wrigley Field in Chicago from which people watch the Cubs play their home games? There are bleachers right up on the rooftops. There was no complaint from the team when it was just the building tenants watching the games. The legal battle flared up when people started to charge for admission. It went along the lines of stopping the practice, but the building owners and tenants demanded they had a right to be on their rooftops and to see whatever it was they could see from their rooftops that wasn't secured from view. The Cubs demanded that a license fee must be paid by anyone profiting from their team's games. The final result is that there are endorsed "Rooftop Partners" of the Chicago Cubs who can charge admission as long as they pay a 17% fee to the ball club. The other option was to build a fence around the top of the stadium to obstruct the view, which was done temporarily to great effect.

That "wind screen" at Wrigley was very much like an authentication and authorization system for a web site. The only reasons to forgo such a security measure are expense, aesthetics, and possibly the arrogant idea that nobody could figure out the URL. Cable, C-Band satellite, Dish Network, DirecTV, and many other Internet video sources use encryption, authentication and authorization, or both to determine who can and cannot view a feed. It's a standard cost of doing business and standard practice in restricted distribution video markets. There are also markets such as terrestrial broadcast television, YouTube, and certain satellite channels that do not use encryption nor authentication/authorization systems because they are trying to secure a broad audience. Therefore, it's easy for a potential viewer to assume an unencrypted and unauthenticated video stream which is accessible over a public network is meant to be a publicly available resource.

As for the actual poster of the link there's something to be said for publicizing a stupid decision by a company. Why would I invest in a company that's giving away a free service and not charging advertisers for time on it? Why would I pay for the service if they are giving it away? If they don't mean to give it away, how technically gifted can their staff be if they think that not publishing the URL makes it secure? These are things people should know about a company before investing in them or doing business with them. The poster was performing a public service by showing the incompetence involved in provision of the service.

Howard Chui neither posted nor, as far as I have seen, advocated using the material in question. He's involved simply because he believes that information about the stupidity of a provider is an important factor for people to consider on a forum about mobile phones and mobile phone services. That he's being attacked for leaving true information about a flaw in someone's service on his forum is a pointless, and frankly juvenile, attempt by the plaintiffs to cover up their own mess.

The people who know it's supposed to be a paid service but who watch it longer than as proof that it's happening are in a much darker gray area than anyone in this situation. If they know the intent of the company providing the feed is not to provide it for free

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[znerk]

That's all well and good of you to do that, but that doesn't mean that everyone should just assume they have permission. On the contrary... unsecured access points with SSIDs of "Free Public Wifi" and "Free Wireless Internet" are growing ever more common. I, personally, tend to avoid them, or button up completely before touching them, as it seems to me that offering "free net access to the world" would be a simply astonishing malware propogation engine.

Your neighbor who simply unknowingly left his AP open may not be so generous, and would be irritated to find people have been freeloading off his service. That's not unreasonable either. Anyone illiterate enough to unknowingly leave their AP open to the world probably left it as the default SSID of "linksys", and if it's still like that when you find it, it would be a courtesy to attempt to log into it with the default password ("admin"), reset it to defaults in case any script kiddies have already found it, then set the new admin password to "i slapped my open hand on my keyboard 5 or 6 times and hit 'ok'". In addition to not noticing that you had done so, said neighbor would probably not notice anything other than 'Gee, the tubes sure are slow tonight' if he had a dozen script kiddies just the other side of his privacy fence, siphoning warez, music, and movies from the P2P networks. He'd be astonished when he received a subpoena from the RIAA, and would never be successfully prosecuted ('I don't have any of them mvp files, or whatever! I never even heard of Snoop Bisquit!')

I guess things like asking permission and common courtesy are just passe anymore. Definitely a sign of this latest generation that has grown up with little respect for other people's property. I don't know what circles you travel in, but speaking for myself and those individuals I call friends, common courtesy is the watchword. We are selfish in that we do things for other people because it makes us feel good. We are lazy in that we do things right the first time, so we don't have to do it again. If you're having permissions issues, maybe you're doing it wrong. ;)

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[goldspider]

Anyone illiterate enough to unknowingly leave their AP open to the world probably left it as the default SSID of "linksys", and if it's still like that when you find it, it would be a courtesy to attempt to log into it with the default password ("admin")...

That's exactly what I'm talking about, though. While I'm sure your intentions are good, you are still intruding onto somebody else's property without permission. It doesn't matter whether or not you're detected, it's' still rude.

It's like checking your neighbor's front doors to see if they're locked, and if they're unlocked, going inside and locking it for them.

Perhaps you could talk to your neighbor and ask them if they'd like help securing their router. That would be the courteous thing to do.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[JeffSchwab]

There used to be a hill you could sit on in this town that let you watch over the fence into a drive-in movie screen. Is that theft? No; it's just spillover, a consequence of where the theater was located. They are broadcasting into the public space. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

"Economic theory considers any voluntary exchange to be mutually beneficial to both parties, for example a buyer and seller. Any exchange, however, can result in additional positive or negative effects on third parties. Those who suffer from external costs do so involuntarily, while those who enjoy external benefits do so at no cost."

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[jwo7777777]

A good analogy is a billboard placed on a road.

It is up to the road owner to set up a toll booth if they want to extract money from those who drive by the billboard. Failure to set up a tollbooth (compounded by failure to even put up a sign that says "private road! ... don't drive here unless you paid the toll!") makes the drivers not complicit in theft of service.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[Jaysyn]

"They will charge you with theft in every civilized state in the union."

BZZZT! Wrong. I actually had this happen to me about 9 years ago.

Re:Well, what did you expect?

[msromike]

"Hey cool. I don't know right from wrong."

If you:

1) knew that it had value
2) knew that compensation was expected
3) used it to your benefit without providing compensation

then you are wrong.

The question is not whether you are able to feign ignorance, any common criminal will do so to avoid consequences. The question is do you know right and wrong?

Looking at your argument you do know right and wrong. However, based on some narcissistic sense of entitlement you simply choose to become an opportunistic thief.

Lawyer fees

[FatAlb3rt]

I wonder how much their lawyer bills each time he has to send out a C&D for posting a link to qtv.mobitv.com/sprintTVlive.mcd.

Re:Lawyer fees

[tgd]

Probably less when they have to send one out for the link to qtv.mobitv.com/sprintTVlive.mcd that you posted.

Quantity discount and all.

Re:Lawyer fees

[KublaiKhan]

If they don't even have the sense to do some basic authentication, then they deserve whatever they get. It's not as though authentication schemes are even that difficult...if it's on a phone-by-phone basis, then SIM authentication would seem to be a fairly easy and effective method of authentication.

Re:Lawyer fees

[squiggleslash]

It certainly would be if Sprint PCS used SIM cards.

Re:Lawyer fees

[KublaiKhan]

They must have some sort of hardware-based authentication in order to verify that a handset is authorized to be on the network, surely?

Re:Lawyer fees

[tinkerghost]

The ESN number of the phone itself is registered with the network - not the SIMM identification information.

Re:Lawyer fees

[Stray7Xi]

I allege that the lawyers are posting these links to provide increased business for themselves. Afterall it worked for the anti-virus industry.

Re:Lawyer fees

[Anonymous Coward]

Well just remember that it's no good to them unless they know they know to save the link to their local computer, then open it in a web browser, choose a channel and load it into their LG Voyager. So it wouldn't be worthwhile posting the link without that instruction, so I think you or anyone else who posts the link would be in the clear.

Re:Lawyer fees

[Anonymous Coward]

tgd's post was supposed to be funny, but as usual, moderators are dumbasses.

Sekrit Government Haxx0ring

[KublaiKhan]

Lookit me! I'm hacking the pentagon! And the CIA! And the FBI!

Hold on, one moment--someone's knocking.

Re:Sekrit Government Haxx0ring

[eln]

I would say I'll visit you in prison, but I'm not allowed to travel to Cuba.

On the bright side, I hear the conditions there aren't so bad. Rumor has it that they'll give you all the water you can drink, even if you're not thirsty!

Re:Sekrit Government Haxx0ring

[JCSoRocks]

Best water torture joke ever! A+++ would read and laugh at again.

Re:Sekrit Government Haxx0ring

[KublaiKhan]

Yeah, but the waitstaff really sucks. They're not getting a tip, that's for sure....

(And not to whine, but I think someone may need a sense of humor.)

Re:Sekrit Government Haxx0ring

[Anonymous Coward]

(And not to whine, but I think someone may need a sense of humor.)

The republicans have really developed a victim complex about that time they tortured all those people. After all, the non-stop jokes have been really harsh and mean! :(

Re:Sekrit Government Haxx0ring

[LandDolphin]

LMAO, This was hilarious.

Re:Sekrit Government Haxx0ring

[OMNIpotusCOM]

And there's lots (and I mean LOTS) of music to listen to. Some would say endless, 23 hour, ear crushing amounts.

Wow...

[neowolf]

I thought companies realized that "Security by Obscurity" doesn't work many years ago. What a bunch of idiots.

Re:Wow...

[ronanbear]

Yes, but that was why they needed the DMCA.

Now they don't need real security at all.

Re:Wow...

[trogdor8667]

That explains a lot. My company is all about "security through obscurity," and they also seem to be stuck about ten years in the past...

Re:Wow...

[Intron]

The point isn't whether Security by Obscurity works, since it obviously doesn't. It's whether it can be considered legally "effective". You can't claim you're being hacked unless you have effective protection of your information. CSS, for example, is no longer considered effective.

Re:Wow...

[neowolf]

The real problem now is because of shit laws like the DMCA, HowardForums is probably going to be taken down until they can find legal help to fight this. At this point- it depends on whether or not the legal department of their ISP has a clue and is willing to fight this.

All of this because at least one person is an idiot at MobiTV for leaving an open URL exposed to the Internet, trusting "Security by Obscurity". If anything- HowardForums should contact Sprint (it seems the URL is for them) and the content providers about MobiTV's lax security in protecting their interests.

Shame shame

[downix]

if I leave my car doors unlocked, keys in the ignition, and a big sign saying "take me for a joyride" I can complain if someone does, infact, take my car, but the police will laugh at me in all likelihood when I report it.

Re:Shame shame

[eln]

What would Slashdot be without silly car analogies?

If you did all that, your insurance might refuse to pay out on your claim, but in all likelihood the police would still investigate and, if they caught the thief, prosecute the crime. They might call you an idiot, and may even laugh after you leave the station, but they'll still treat it as a real crime, because it is one.

Re:Shame shame

[stoolpigeon]

Let's go with something that fits the bill a little better. On a hot summer day you run a long garden hose out from your yard on the sidewalk turn it on and leave it running. Then you run an ad in the paper telling people that if they mail you five bucks they can use your hose to get a drink. But one day you notice a neighbor has been telling friends about your hose and they start coming by and getting a drink without mailing in the money.
 
You've put your resource out in a public place with no restrictions - and they should be accountable?

Re:Shame shame

[T-Bone-T]

How is that a crime? The car owner willfully and knowingly allowed someone to drive their car. Am I a thief if my fiance gives me the keys to her car and says,"Go get the groceries" and I comply?

Re:Shame shame

[AK Marc]

In most places, it is illegal to leave a running car unattended, but it is not illegal to borrow something with permission. A sign saying "take one" is an invitation to take one item that doesn't belong to you. They have them at supermaket checkouts. If you are told you can take something, you may take it and it isn't illegal. In the example, the car was running, open, and with a sign indicating that the person should take a free joyride. If the sign can be reasonably assumed to be placed there by the owner (which would be reasonable, since in the example it was placed there by him) then it is perfectly legal to take the car. The only one that broke any laws was the owner, leaving the car running and unattended.

Re:Shame shame

[cheesethegreat]

if I leave my car doors unlocked, keys in the ignition, and a big sign saying "take me for a joyride" I can complain if someone does, infact, take my car, but the police will laugh at me in all likelihood when I report it.

(Note, this post is based on UK law)

Actually, you can't complain. Consent, reasonable belief in consent, or reasonable belief in obtaining consent are all defences to charges of theft or criminal damage. A sign saying "take me for a joyride" could certainly give rise to a reasonable belief in consent. Ergo, no crime. Also, you would have no claim in tort as consent operates as a defense there too.

The argument that could be advanced if MobiTV tried to claim theft against someone who visited the URL is that presenting an unencrypted link on the WWW indicates the consent of the posting party for people to access that link. The question is whether that is an irrebuttable assumption. I suspect that it is not, as it is standard practice for sites to include Terms and Conditions which seek to constrain the ways in which users access unencrypted sites, and courts would likely be reluctant to rule that one cannot limit access except via encryption.

IANAL (but I am a law student)

Re:Shame shame

[tknn]

Actually they would not if you put a sign on it inviting people to do so, which is why his analogy is incorrect. (beyond the fact that it didn't much compare to accessing a publicly available site anyway)

Re:Shame shame

[IndustrialComplex]

If the owner posted the sign that said take me for a joyride, and the person did take it for a joyride (lets assume that he did return it and not just take it to a scrapyard).

How could you call that theft?

When people put stuff outside their house and a big sign saying "Free" next to it, would the police investigate that 'theft'?

Re:Shame shame

[the_wishbone]

Dammit man, we already had a car analogy going, and you had to go and reply with one that makes sense...

Re:Shame shame

[geminidomino]

Am I a thief if my fiance gives me the keys to her car and says,"Go get the groceries" and I comply? No, you're just pussy-whipped. *ducks*

Re:Shame shame

[Nullav]

No, this is more like saying 'don't look at my car'.

Re:Shame shame

[RegularFry]

Extending that analogy (and boy, do I hate a bad analogy), reading the contents hosted at a specific URL is technically asking permission *first*, then taking it if the server agrees. The first lines of each side of the HTTP conversation say it all:

GET /sprintTVlive.mcd HTTP/1.1
Host: qtv.mobitv.com
...
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
...

Mind you, I'm getting a 403 Forbidden response at the moment, but the above must have been true at some point...

One missing link..

[gQuigs]

qtv.mobitv.com/sprintTVlive.mcd

Posted AC to avoid karma whoring...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I found this in the Sprint forums and here we go:

qtv.mobitv.com/sprintTVlive.mcd

1. Copy and paste that link into the address bar.

2. Don't run it but save it to your computer.

3. Find it on your computer and OPEN it up. Select to open it with Internet Explorer or the browser of your choice.

4. There will be a whole bunch of links. Choose the channel you want to watch...

5. Get your LG Voyager and start up the browser.

6. Type one of the links into your Voyager and press OK!

There you go, live TV...

* * *

Heres the list for people too lazy to download the file

This is a shorter less messy version of the file

Bikinis, lingerie, and less. Beach, Bedroom, Hot tub. MAXX Look ??? All Girls. All the time

Re:Posted AC to avoid karma whoring...

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, ignore the bit after the stars as apparently the "Plain Old Text" formatting option attempts to parse the XML...

Other things MobiTV is doing.

[AltGrendel]

• Standing outside the HowardForums main offices and throwing rocks.

• Sticking out their tongues and saying "Nya, nya, nya".

• Calling their mother and complaining.

Seriously, this is probably something to draw attention to a service that few people knew about. Any publicity is good publicity, after all.

Bad Analogies

[prestonmichaelh]

And let the bad analogies begin!

You know, this is kind of like leaving the keys to your car....

Re:Bad Analogies

[Fnord666]

And let the bad analogies begin! You know, this is kind of like leaving the keys to your car....

Your analogy is flawed. It doesn't involve a ca .... oh never mind.

Freeloading

[Khyber]

"There are too many people freeloading nowadays. The internet makes it so much easier to freeload"

Jee, I wonder if you'd apply the same concept to OTA radio and Local TV with regards to magnetic recording media back in the 80s and 90s.

The fact of the matter is that they're claiming it is a hack, when it's their own stupidity and ignorance that allowed this to happen. Calling this a hack is just an attempt upon the person's character. People will begin to think the person that stumbled across this is a hacker, then they'll get that reputation, which in turn tarnishes the reputation of the non-hacker. It's character assassination and MobiTV should be nailed to the fucking wall while someone calls for their waaaaaahmbulance.

what about google?

[aleph42]

As always, that kind of position is missing the fact that google is technically doing the same thing.

It's not that far fetch: imagine you are googling for your favorite show, and find some url with a video stream; and it's form a respectable "nbc.com" or the like website. How do you guess it's supposed to be a paying service?
Want a real life example? The other day I was looking for some bash command help, and the third google result was from http://www.experts-exchange.com./ If you access it directly, it hides the answers and asks you to pay. But from google, you get to the answers directly because of some glitch.

What I'm saying is you can't blame the user (or here, the website) if they never went through a dsiclaimer page that made them realise: "well, if I click this link, I will have done something illegal". Free equivalent services exist.

Re:what about google?

[Bryansix]

Ya, I hate Experts-Exchange and I can't understand why people pay for their stupid service but I love the google glitch. I get all kinds of great answers that way. I just wish these people would post these questions on a public forum in the first place.

Re:what about google?

[aleph42]

Well, the fact is, "experts" get some kind of reward for posting there (I don't think they get money, but it happens on some other sites).

I would not go as far as saying that their buisness model is flawed; rather, I'm saying that you can in good faith come across that site without paying (as I did the first time).
Some sites serve obviously illegal content, other offer something which is to good to be legal (full recent games download, etc), but when it's just a video strem of a TV show, or an answer about some bash command question, you can't just blame the user saying he should have "guessed" it was illegal.

And the same applies to the "dumb" bots of google.

Re:what about google?

[Ogi_UnixNut]

Ya, I hate Experts-Exchange and I can't understand why people pay for their stupid service but I love the google glitch. I get all kinds of great answers that way. I just wish these people would post these questions on a public forum in the first place.

In my experience, the "experts-exchange" forum is just copied stuff from other newsgroups and forums in the first place. I can't remember how many times I search for a fix, and find the same text both on the experts-exchange forum and some mailinglist archive somewhere else. I'm sure they have original stuff as well, but most of the time I found that it wasn't the case.

Re:what about google?

[Alter_3d]

You dont have to use the Google cache. Simply scroll down, past all the "hidden" answers, and the real ones are at the bottom of the page.

No registering, paying, etc, etc, etc

Re:what about google?

[Anonymous Coward]

I fully agree. Almost everything on EE is available elsewhere. I think the entire EE concept was invented as a way to monetize laziness. There are people who are too lazy to use Google and don't know about Google Groups -- they still need to have their questions answered.

Re:what about google?

[craig1709]

Am I the only one to notice something? Visit: http://www.experts-exchange.com./Microsoft/Development/MS_Access/Access_Forms/Q_23223103.html It's a question about the SQL Insert command. Scroll down. Down down down, below the obnoxious "Zones" that go on for ages. And then...there are all the responses in plain sight.

Re:what about google?

[TubeSteak]

The other day I was looking for some bash command help, and the third google result was from http://www.experts-exchange.com./ If you access it directly, it hides the answers and asks you to pay. But from google, you get to the answers directly because of some glitch. That's not a glitch.

Experts-exchange (and many many other forums) filter by user agent... and the GoogleBot gets a free pass.
Otherwise, their content would never show up in the search engine.

Install the user agent switcher in Fire Fox & created a Googlebot entry for your own free pass.
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)

Am I stealing service by doing this?
Is it "hacking"?

Re:what about google?

[merreborn]

The other day I was looking for some bash command help, and the third google result was from http://www.experts-exchange.com./ If you access it directly, it hides the answers and asks you to pay. But from google, you get to the answers directly because of some glitch.

Actually, it's not a glitch. Experts exchange wants to have their cake and eat it too.

They want to show up in google search results, but they want people to pay for the answers. However, for the relevant text to be included in google's index, they have to make it available on the page for everyone -- they're not allowed to show google different content from what you get when you click on the link. That's called "cloaking", and google has cracked down on it hard for a few years.

So, experts exchange formats their page like this:
The original question
"Pay to see the first answer"
"Pay to see the second answer"
"Pay to see the third answer"
What looks like a giant page footer footer
more footer
more footer
more footer
more footer
more footer
The original question
The actual content of the first answer
The actual content of the second answer
The actual content of the third answer

Here's an example Note the "premium members only" crap at the top, the giant "footer", and the *real* answers at the bottom.

This way, google indexes the real content at the bottom of the page, but most people see the fake content at the top of the page, and the "footer", and give up before scrolling down to the real content at the bottom.

It's kinda scummy.

Re:what about google?

[mounthood]

It's not a glitch, it's a scam. They use CSS/Javascript to hide the info from the reader, but still have it available to Google's index. They are scamming free advertising: they present advertisements but get indexed for tech answers.

Choose "Cached" and "cached text" to see the info. Also, using "View > Page Style > No Style" can help with some of these sites.

Re:what about google?

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

Actually, it's not a glitch. Experts exchange wants to have their cake and eat it too.

They want to show up in google search results, but they want people to pay for the answers. However, for the relevant text to be included in google's index, they have to make it available on the page for everyone -- they're not allowed to show google different content from what you get when you click on the link. That's called "cloaking", and google has cracked down on it hard for a few years.

So, experts exchange formats their page like this:
The original question
"Pay to see the first answer"
"Pay to see the second answer"
"Pay to see the third answer"
What looks like a giant page footer footer
more footer
more footer
more footer
more footer
more footer
The original question
The actual content of the first answer
The actual content of the second answer
The actual content of the third answer
Here's an example Note the "premium members only" crap at the top, the giant "footer", and the *real* answers at the bottom.
This way, google indexes the real content at the bottom of the page, but most people see the fake content at the top of the page, and the "footer", and give up before scrolling down to the real content at the bottom.
It's kinda scummy.

You sir (or maddam) are brilliant. I lack mod points today, so I will instead simply reply and quote everything you said in the hopes of getting more visibility to your hack

Re:what about google?

[maxume]

The 'glitch' in Experts Exchange is that the answer is available in the page source and their obfuscation is happening client side. This is related to Google in that the answers provide good search words and Googlebot gets upset if you do User-Agent gaming to feed it special pages.

At the moment, I can't find a solution that isn't simply displayed at the bottom of the page(so either the obfuscation is turned off or it isn't working in Firefox 3 Beta 3), but I have zapped their style sheets in the past:

https://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/zap.html#zap_style_sheets

(Which is sometimes easier than messing around with the page source)

Re:what about google?

[rotor]

Hmm - I've been accessing experts-exchange for years through google and never even noticed that I was getting the answers through a glitch. I guess they should send google a C&D, huh?

Re:what about google?

[Stiletto]

I always thought showing Googlebot different content than you show actual users was against Google's acceptable use policy and is grounds for having your site removed from their index. This is called "cloaking" and is a well-known black-hat SEO spamming technique.

Re:what about google?

[suso]

Am I stealing service by doing this?
Is it "hacking"?

Yes, and you have probably said "Guns don't kill people. People kill people." Same difference. You know what you are doing.

Re:what about google?

[the_wishbone]

Wow, thanks for that. I've run across that site several times, and always get ticked that I can see a solution post in the google results, yet when I click I get the subscription crap. I always gave up before scrolling down far enough.

Re:what about google?

[jfmiller]

This would work so much better if they used some unobtrusive javascript to hide the content. At least then it would require a person to view page source or enable FireBug.

Re:what about google?

[ittybad]

Whoa. I cannot belive I fell for that...twice I think. Now I know, and knowing is half the battle. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Oh, for shame.

Re:what about google?

[z80kid]

Yes, and you have probably said "Guns don't kill people. People kill people." Same difference. You know what you are doing.

Why? Do guns fake their user-agent to hack experts-exchange?

Or maybe you're saying his browser is guilty of "hacking" experts-exchange? That if we banned browsers, there'd be no "URL hacking" ?

Your corollary is completely backwards. You blame him - not his browser - for "hacking" experts exchange. But you blame the gun for shooting someone.

Re:what about google?

[Anonymous Coward]

As another poster has said, just scroll down the bottom and you'll see it all. "Experts-exchange" aren't doing anything dodgy with Google here (although I make no comment on the other merits of their "service").

Some web sites can ALWAYS look different in your browser compared to the Google cache - it goes in with one user agent, and yours may be different. Google can't possibly cache "every possible user agent string, including one I've just pulled out of my arse".

Re:what about google?

[merreborn]

This would work so much better if they used some unobtrusive javascript to hide the content. At least then it would require a person to view page source or enable FireBug.

That would violate google's cloaking rules. They'd probably be pulled out of google's index entirely.

Re:what about google?

[aleph42]

Exaclty. People can do this in good faith, because the service could exist for free.

It's the same with the video streaming of tv shows; some channels (nbc?) make their show available for free, with ads (like, you know, on TV).

It's different of course if you access a warez website, or some other thing which is obviously illegal; but in this case, it really seems stupid to try to sue; they should just add a n intermediate page stating that the video is pay only (or better, use some kind of crypto!)

Re:what about google?

[jfmiller]

I don't believe that it would. IANAGSA, but using javascript to manipulate the user interface is a fairly common practice. Cloaking, IMHO, refers to sending the Google Bot different content then you send a normal user. With javascript you send the same information to everyone, and simply change how it is presented with the script. A huge number of sites already do this to keep all the important content on the page while keeping the user's experience clean and straight forward. If you are using Slashdot's new comment interface, you can see the results.

Re:what about google?

[thyrf]

Google doesn't always (if at all) index content produced by a javascript.

Re:what about google?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have a browser that lets you use user stylesheets, apply the following to Expert's Exchange: .allZones, .googleUser, .zoneAd3, .testimonials2, .blurredAnswer, .flipCont, a.bTextViewSolution, .allZonesMain {display:none!important;}

It'll put the actual answers much closer to the top. :)

Re:what about google?

[soliptic]

You wouldn't produce the content with javascript. The content would be in the (x)html document; you'd just use javascript to make it invisible to a GUI rendering browser (CSS display:none;, margin-left:-1000px;, etc). The content would always be in the DOM, accessible via scripting, lack of scripting, screenreaders, or plain old view source. You just wouldn't see it if you had js on, which is in the 90%s for all the population, and I might imagine higher within the "gullible enough to be fooled by this sort of thing in the first place" segment they'd be aiming at.

Re:what about google?

[squallbsr]

But if you have all the content in HTML, then use Javascript to hide part of the content, then Google would still see all the content, normal users wouldn't see it unless if they turned off Javascript.

Re:what about google?

[hador_nyc]

] If you access it directly, it hides the answers and asks you to pay. But from google, you get to the answers directly because of some glitch.

Now this is funny. I honestly had no idea you had to pay for it with Experts-exchange. I google everything, from coding help to websites for my credit cards; to be sure I'm going to the site I want to go to instead of a phony.

Re:what about google?

[pgn674]

Huh, I always thought the answers at the bottom of the page were from "non-experts", and the experts' answers were at the top and cloaked. I have Googled into Experts Exchange a lot, and it's frequently been quite helpful. It would seem to me that this cloaking thing will only deter those who are new to Experts Exchange, and anyone who comes upon it frequently and would actually benefit from the paid service (if it gave what it promised) will easily discover where the answers actually are.

Re:what about google?

[raddan]

Wow! How did I fall for that?

Re:what about google?

[flummoxd]

Where 'glitch' = orchestrated attempt to mislead the googlebot for the purpose of luring suckers into paying for answers that they were led to by a seemingly legitimate Google search.

Re:what about google?

[Bryansix]

That's not true. They have a mask over them that says you need to login.

Re:what about google?

[StikyPad]

And answered in a hurry. Newsgroups are hit-and-miss, and there's not much way to provide incentive for a response. Google answers was a good concept, but probably cost more to manage and operate than it made.

Re:what about google?

[Nullav]

Am I stealing service by doing this?
Is it "hacking"?

You don't even have to switch useragents or use Google cache to see the answers, just scroll waaaaaayyyyyy down to see the answers. It's not stealing, it's cleaning!

Re:what about google?

[RegularFry]

Possibly, in the "Nice hack!" sense...

Just FYI

[TripMaster Monkey]

The URLs obtained with this "hack" play just fine in Quicktime as well.

Re:Just FYI

[goodtrick]

but they don't play with my version of mplayer :(

rtsp_session: unsupported RTSP server. Server type is 'DSS/5.5.5 (Build/489.16; Platform/Linux; Release/Darwin; state/beta; )'

Re:Just FYI

[sootman]

Just for fun I thought I'd take a look. I tried to watch the 80s/90s one ( rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/96-CDMA.sdp ) but it wouldn't load--just went to 'paused' mode. For fun I went to http://live.mobitv.com/ and was greeted by a plain-vanilla RHEL/Apache2 page. Yeah, these guys run a real tight ship.

If you are a member of the general public:
 
The fact that you are seeing this page indicates that the website you just visited is either experiencing problems, or is undergoing routine maintenance.
 
If you would like to let the administrators of this website know that you've seen this page instead of the page you expected, you should send them e-mail.

I'm pretty sure it's stock because the line that says "You may now add content to the directory /var/www/html/" is dynamically generated. For fuck's sake, it even says right on the freaking page, "To prevent this page from ever being used, follow the instructions in the file /etc/httpd/conf.d/welcome.conf." Hell, you don't even have to do that much--just say rm /var/www/html/index* and then touch /var/www/html/index.html.

The good news is, even if the C&D works, the videos will still be finable via a search engine--there's no robots.txt file, either.

Anyone want a job as a web admin at mobitv.com? They'll probably have an opening soon, and evidently no experience is necessary. :-)

Re:Just FYI

[dHagger]

Just tried to watch some of the streams using QuickTime. From Sweden. And it works. Just too bad the quality is too low to be watchable. For some streams, it is possible to replace the "CDMA"-part of the URL with "EVDO" to get higher quality - but unfortunately the sound skips for me when doing that. Maybe due to everyone testing it. Will try again in the morning, when you americans are sleeping.

This comment worth 5 dollars.

[Joe the Lesser]

Hey, you should have paid 5 dollars to view this comment. Please cease and desist, because you are stealing my revenue.

Re:This comment worth 5 dollars.

[SQLGuru]

But by posting the comment, you gave some rights over to Slashdot (and parent company, etc.) who give us viewers rights to view those comments. And just because something is WORTH $5 doesn't mean that you have to pay that money. Some paintings are worth millions and yet you can view them without paying....but to OWN the painting, well, pony up some cash.

Layne

It's just good business

[Bovius]

I wonder if they decided it simply wasn't worth the development effort to put their content behind encryption? Maybe they thought litigation against improper access would be cheaper, or at least simpler. With the RIAA's successes in court over the lsat few years, there is some precedent for that idea.

Yes, I know, secure connections are not rocket science. But it's business; the path perceived most profitable is the path chosen.

Re:It's just good business

[merreborn]

I wonder if they decided it simply wasn't worth the development effort to put their content behind encryption?

Encryption isn't even necessary. The file in question is being served by apache 2.0, which supports HTTP basic authentication. It's trivial to configure.

Yes, I know, secure connections are not rocket science. But it's business; the path perceived most profitable is the path chosen.

Sure, but when the options are: set up HTTP basic auth, or pay the lawyers to bully anyone who posts the URL qtv.mobitv.com/sprintTVlive.mcd ... is paying the lawyers for a bunch of C&D letters really cheaper than having your admins drop a couple lines in httpd.conf?

Don't tell slashdot's Lawyers, but....

[Bobfrankly1]

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/07/163232

I hav hax0r3d slashdot. All your /. are belong to U5!

Re:Don't tell slashdot's Lawyers, but....

[Qzukk]

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=479626&cid=22676772

I am in ur site, hax0ring ur posts.

This is totally wrong

[Rik Sweeney]

It's MobiTV's fault for leaving their service wide open, just like it's London Zoo's fault for letting people be able to see the giraffes from Regents Park.

What London Zoo should do is force people who walk through Regents Park to stare at the ground* so that they can't see the giraffes and thus have to pay to go and see them.

*Yes I know, 95% of London already stare at the ground whilst walking along the road.

Re:This is totally wrong

[jbaugh]

Not according to this.... They all appear to be texting.

Re:This is totally wrong

[SeaFox]

*Yes I know, 95% of London already stare at the ground whilst walking along the road.

Is that to avoid being recognizable by the surveillance cameras?

And this, kids, is why ....

[zappepcs]

security through obscurity does NOT work.

Can we not get them fined for being publicly stupid as a bag of hammers?

No offense meant to those hammers who are reading this post, or who may have a hammer waiting for them at home.

Re:And this, kids, is why ....

[rrohbeck]

Can we not get them fined for being publicly stupid as a bag of hammers? We don't need to. They're wearing a big sign around their necks saying "WE'RE STOOPID" now.

And don't insult the hammers please.

Re:And this, kids, is why ....

[uffe_nordholm]

Re "Can we not get them fined for being publicly stupid as a bag of hammers?"

There was a case in Sweden a few years ago, in which (I think) Ericsson got fined for a similar mistake. They had posted the latest yearly financial report on their web site, but not yet included any links to it. However, some computer-savvy person guessed the name of the file, and hey-presto he/she had access to this info days before the rest of the public. Since this is against the stock market rules, Ericsson got fined. I do not know if the 'hacker' got any punishment, but would be surprised is he/she did.

Just because they're stupid doesn't make themWrong

[Shteven]

This strikes me as basically being the same as a lot of user-uploaded photo sites. You can designate an album as private, and then people can't browse through it picture by picture. But if you send a direct link to the picture, it will be displayed.

The user expects these photos to be private. If you ran a intelligent dictionary attack against them (If photo "a1" exists, guessing "a2" isn't too hard) they'd probably be quite upset. I'd consider this to be immoral, certainly.

Poor security doesn't make it right. Now, if I was them, I'd concern myself much more with simply -fixing- the problem, but that rarely seems to happen. They have a professional, commercial site, they should be able to fix this quickly. So quickly that there wouldn't be a point to going after this guy, because it would be closed in 1-2 weeks. If it takes any longer than that, the site was poorly done in the first place.

Security through obscurity

[Trivial_Zeros]

This is a classic example of a site trying to be "secure" through obscurity. The correct response would not be issuing a take down notice, thus publicizing the issue. An intelligent response would be to move the service to a secure site that required credentials.

What exactly is MobiTV trying to claim is their IP? The URL? I didn't think such short addresses were copyrightable. I don't think they realize how the internet works. If I type in a URL in a browser, I'm sending a request for data back. It's up to mobitv what to return. If they don't want us to have access to the data, don't return it. Simple.

Re:Security through obscurity

[fishbowl]

>What exactly is MobiTV trying to claim is their IP? The URL? I didn't >think such short addresses were copyrightable.

A domain name can be considered a trademark in some cases, but that's trademark.

showthread.php is not MobiTV's property, and if this URL can be copyrighted it is a derivative work.

Another parallel

[TripMaster Monkey]

This situation reminds me a bit of the story a few weeks back, when the government was getting miffed at amateur satellite spotters for looking upward. The differences of course, being that the government couldn't make the satellites completely undetectable, even if they tried, and they did try...as opposed to MobiTV, who has the gall to bleat about "hacking" after being stupid enough to post a publically available URL.

How about...

[deesine]

a kiddie porn site?

Watchable in VLC

[bassgoonist]

If anyone is interested you can watch these in VLC. Just open a network stream, select RTSP and paste in one of the URLS. Low quality, but interesting to think you could watch that on a phone.

Re:Watchable in VLC

[TypoNAM]

It seems I cannot get it to work with VideoLAN Client, something about RTSP doesn't work through NAT as far as I can tell by some google researching. Oh well.

My NAT setup is basically a Linux 2.4.x kernel using iptables for NAT routing. :P

Time to change your sig

[Itninja]

So I guess this means /.ers will now change their sig from 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0 to qtv.mobitv.com/sprintTVlive.mcd....

Re:Time to change your sig

[MBGMorden]

Why change when you can have both!!!!?!?!!

Re:Time to change your sig

[JesterXXV]

There's no E's in your sig. What do I win?

Re:Time to change your sig

[sm62704]

There's no E's in your sig. What do I win?
--
Yo mama so fake, she failed the Turing Test.

Your own page on! And for bonus points, considering your own sig, so does your mom!

What do you want, a cookie? We already gave you one. So did Google.

Quick Fixes

[prajjwal]

It is a good strategic move in the long run for the company: if they are able to make the forum remove the post, then it would be a precedent for future cases like that. However, it sounds, in a way, just an excuse to cover up for very sloppy behaviour. In the time you take to ask someone to remove a link, why not do something about the link that is already available: I can see that it is still there!

Re:Quick Fixes

[the_wishbone]

"It might possibly work out" does not make it a good strategic move. They have no legal basis for their threats, and their lawyers are morons if they think they do. I highly doubt any court is going to side with them and agree that simply pointing to publicly available information is illegal. You think they'd try the same stunt against Slashdot or Google? Probably not. It is, in fact, an idiotic move that will only cause the Streisand effect and a whole lot of negative publicity. If you don't want it out in public, secure it (you can't argue that it was secured AT ALL when any browser can get it) and don't complain when people find it.

Same thing happened in Bragg v. Linden Labs

[Petey_Alchemist]

...when a Second Life user bought land before it went to auction using a non-linked but publicly accessible URL and he was banned and his assets seized.

http://secondlife.typepad.com/

Some interesting background reading. They settled, but the "hack" question was never answered by the court .

Re:Same thing happened in Bragg v. Linden Labs

[Lehk228]

umm, second life is a game and isn't real. killing people is a bannable offense in some games but it isn't against the law or actionable in court.

Clueless lawyers

[K. S. Kyosuke]

"The url "qtv.mobitv.com/sprintTVlive.mcd" is not publicly available, nor is it posted anywhere on our website for viewers to access. The only way to access the links is through this url, and the only way to obtain this url is through hacking/debugging."

Great, that made my day. :-) Any time I use Ctrl+U in Konqueror, I'm hacking and/or debugging. I'm so scared!

Guess They Never...

[maz2331]

What? I guess the site devs never heard of the obscure concept known in some circles as "cookies"?

Cease! Desist! Grow Up!

[fm6]

In brief, security through obscurity is very bad security, but it's still security, and breaking somebody's security is illegal.

My first thought about the C&D letter is that it's stupidly counterproductive, because even if the recipient complies, the publicity will actually make more people aware of the URL than would otherwise. But then I realized that if management didn't send out the C&D letter, they'd catch grief from their stakeholders for "lack of fiduciary responsibility" or whatever. They could even get sued themselves. C&D letters are just one of those legal rituals big companies have to do, no matter how silly the context. Remember the New Zork Times?

What is stupid is thinking that nobody would find out about this URL.

Re:Cease! Desist! Grow Up!

[T-Bone-T]

"security through obscurity is very bad security, but it's still security"

No, it isn't security at all. Just because it is called "security" doesn't make it security.

Re:Cease! Desist! Grow Up!

[metamatic]

In the phrase "security through obscurity", the use of the word "security" is sarcasm.

Re:Cease! Desist! Grow Up!

[PitaBred]

If I hide a box of money under a park bench, should I be surprised if someone else finds it and takes it? Actually, a better example would be if I made a picture, and hid it there. Should I be surprised and outraged that someone broke my "security" if they call the news crews to come see it?

Security through obscurity is not a valid single source of security. Even squirrels and bluejays know that.

Re:Cease! Desist! Grow Up!

[fm6]

Whatever. It's an attempt to protect something. Circumventing said protection, however feeble, is illegal.

Re:Cease! Desist! Grow Up!

[fm6]

You speak for everybody who uses the phrase? You certainly don't speak for me.

Re:Cease! Desist! Grow Up!

[fm6]

Of course you shouldn't be surprised if a poorly-secured item is stolen. That doesn't change the fact that theft is illegal. The fact that the stolen item was easy to steal is not a mitigating factor.

Re:Cease! Desist! Grow Up!

[T-Bone-T]

There is no attempt here to protect the url's contents. The url is simply in a form that is only commonly used by programs, not humans, but that doesn't make it any kind of protection. While hiding or obscurity are often parts of a security system, they do not constitute security when used alone.

Re:Cease! Desist! Grow Up!

[fm6]

What's your point? That the owner of the URL didn't try to protect it? If so, why do they mind so much that people are circulating it?

Or is your point that the content behind the URL is fair game because it was so poorly hidden? I think you'll find that the law disagrees with you.

Re:Cease! Desist! Grow Up!

[T-Bone-T]

My point is that it is not illegal, as you contend, because there were no security broken or circumvented.

Re:Cease! Desist! Grow Up!

[fm6]

Apparently you know more law than the lawyers involved in this. And also the various prosecutors who have put people in jail for logging into unprotected accounts. Where did you get your degree?

Re:Cease! Desist! Grow Up!

[Palinchron]

I just attempted to protect my privacy by closing one of my two curtains (for the same window); half the window is still available for looking through. Are you suggesting that anyone watching my nakedness is doing something illegal?

Re:Cease! Desist! Grow Up!

[T-Bone-T]

There is a huge difference between this and logging into account. You have to have a url and some form of authentication to log in to an account and access the data. MobiTV has a url with readily available content but no authentication is required, thus there is no account to hack.

When you go to a url, one of two things happens:
1. The content is served regardless of who you are.
or
2. The server asks for some form of authentication and if the proper response is received, the server responds with the content.

It is hacking if you find a way to circumvent #2 but it is not hacking if #1 happens. When you go to the MobiTV urls, #2 is expected to happen but #1 is happening instead with no additional action on your part. There is nothing illegal about your actions when that happens, only stupidity on the part of MobiTV.

Re:Cease! Desist! Grow Up!

[fm6]

Dude, people have gone to jail for using accounts with no password.

The owner of the URL obviously considers it a secret. You're claiming that because it's a URL they can't. I'd check with a lawyer before trying that in the real world.

Re:Cease! Desist! Grow Up!

[T-Bone-T]

I don't care about what happened to people using accounts. They were using accounts, nobody using the MobiTV url is using an account. You can't copyright a url, so why can a url be considered a secret?

Re:Cease! Desist! Grow Up!

[fm6]

You can't copyright a url, so why can a url be considered a secret? What does copyright have to do with anything?

Lots of trivial things are secret. My social security number is a secret, and if you tried to steal it, I'd assume you were trying to rip me off.

Stop playing lawyer and just admit that the law doesn't work the way you think it should.

Re:Cease! Desist! Grow Up!

[fm6]

IANAL. I'm not even sure it's illegal to be a peeping tom any more. But if somebody were to climb up a ladder to peer though that space in your window, would you, or would you not consider your privacy violated? I think most people would.

You're something like the 5th person to make pretty much the same argument in response to my post. The logic seems to go, "if it's not properly protected, it's fair game". That's not the way ethics or the law works. These assume you have a right to privacy, and to be secure in your possessions and person. These rights don't magically disappear because you're sloppy in securing them.

Re:Cease! Desist! Grow Up!

[Palinchron]

Actually, all I meant to express is that your statement - "Whatever. It's an attempt to protect something. Circumventing said protection, however feeble, is illegal." - is too broad as well, and stays too broad if you replace "illegal" by "immoral".

Like you, I don't agree with "if it's not properly protected, it's fair game"; but the statement you made three posts up is an equally foolish extreme. Just the fact that someone tried to secure something doesn't mean anything on its own; some level of effectiveness is required, or things quickly get silly.

Re:Cease! Desist! Grow Up!

[T-Bone-T]

Why is a URL considered a secret?

Re:Cease! Desist! Grow Up!

[fm6]

OK, my legal/moral logic was too simplistic. I don't see how your drapes example relates.

URL is an address no copyright Promotional Effort?

[FromTheAir]

A URL is an address I don't think an address can be copyrighted.

Also the burden is on the host to restrict access to anything via standard protocols that they connect to the internet.

Here again the ego achieves the oppostite of it's intentions bringing attention, unless..

It is an ingenious plot by MobiTV to bring attention to their service, they have succeeded .. Hmmm

Works on my Treo, and Quicktime

[Rufus211]

If you download the mcmd file and look at it in a text editor it's just an XML playlist file. The rtsp:// streams play fine with Quicktime on Windows/Mac, having a few problems with mplayer on linux.

The more interesting thing is if you go to the URL in a Treo browser, it launches the SprintTV application and lets you stream all of them to your phone. Hell of a lot better than $5/month/channel.

http://qtv.mobitv.com/sprintTVlive.mcd

Re: Do it up like Julius Baer and Wikileaks!

[Bovius]

A recipe for misdirection:

* 1 link to "private" content
* 1 cup TinyURL(c) brand address shortening
* 2 lbs. unauthorized access
* 1 content owner
* An army of lawyers

Preheat oven to "Litigation". Route link through address shortening. Mix with unauthorized access, and let rise until content owner exclaims "IT IS TEH HAXORZ!1". Apply army of lawyers liberally to TinyURL for providing access to content. Place in preheated oven and bake until lawsuit reaches a golden brown. Cool before serving.

(Note: Recipe not tested.)

Quicktime

[CaptScarlet22]

The links play in Quicktime just fine.

DMCA notice to Canada?

[randyest]

Did anyone ready the PDF of the letter they sent to Howard . . . in Canada . . . citing the DMCA (a US law?) I don't know where HoFo's servers are, or if Canada has a DMCA-like law yet, but that seems pretty silly and maybe Howard should prep a backup server not in the US just in case. Then write the idiots at MobiTV a funny reply like the guys at the pirate bay do.

Silly MobiTV -- you can't copyright an URL!

Re:DMCA notice to Canada?

[rhpenguin]

Our law men (and women) keep trying to get DMCA style law on the books here but we Canucks keep bitchslapping it down.

http://www.faircopyrightforcanada.ca/

Re:DMCA notice to Canada?

[fishbowl]

>Silly MobiTV -- you can't copyright an URL!

This is not necessarily correct. It is possible for a URL to be non-trivial and original, and it is possible for that non-trivial URL to be fixed into a tangible form for more than a brief duration of time. Regardless of whether it is possible to include the notice, it certainly is possible for a URL to be subject to copyright protection.

Not this one though, even if it is original and has been fixed into a tangible media for more than a brief period of time.

The domain name may be a trademark, but that is distinct from copyright.

showthread.php is not mobitv's work, and in addition, it is a title. Not subject to copyright law under Berne, Canada, or USA law.

The questionmark and the single letter parameter name assignment are both trivial, as is the number 1332161 which may have been a trade secret until it was used publicly.

There is nothing here that any court will construe as being subject to copyright. You should let them go forward and force them to bring this evidence to a judicial hearing.

Essentially this company is claiming ownership of the number 1332161 and threatening to sue in a federal court to defend its use.

Slashdotted

[PinkyDead]

http://qtv.mobitv.com/sprintTVlive.mcd

OK maybe they're not, but they should be...

Re:Is this what you want?

[boristdog]

Is it wrong? Yes

WRONG. Based on your scenario we need to get permission from the site owner to visit any web site.

Any web site which is publicly available is de-facto a public web site. This is precedent since the inception of the www. Even if you had a button that said "Do not click unless you are a paid member of this site" you would have no legal leg to stand on if anyone else clicked it.

Everyone is making real property analogies to this. A web site is not a house, it is not a building, it is not a car. If it were, it would be taxed as such and we would all need written permission to visit each site.

Anonymous Karma Whore

[Anonymous Coward]

channel name="MSNBC" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/1-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="FOX News" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/8-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="Discovery" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/3-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="TLC" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/4-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="Animal Planet" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/63-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="NBC Comedy" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/1500-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="ESPN Mobile TV" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/4103-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="NBC Sports Mobile" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/1513-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="Lipstick Jungle" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/1508-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="Maxx Look" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/48-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="Toon World TV" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/28-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="Access Hollywood" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/1515-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="Love Laffs" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/4104-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="Bloomberg" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/52-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="Tim Gunns Guide to Style" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/1519-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="The Mic Hip Hop" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/910-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="V40 Hot Hits" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/911-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="Totally 80s 90s" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/96-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="Double Z Country" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/72-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="RandB Jamz" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/425-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="Ritmo Caliente" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/97-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="Chaos Extreme" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/913-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="Shift Alternative" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/912-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="USA Mobile" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/1503-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="Bravo To Go" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/1502-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="SCI FI Pulse Mobile" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/1501-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="Oxygen" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/58-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="Discovery Mobile" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/53-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="A and E Mobile" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/17-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="The History Channel Mobile" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/19-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="NBC News Mobile" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/2-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="Fashion TV" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/22-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="Comedy Time" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/21-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="MAXX SPORTS" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com/50-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="IGN" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/59-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="Bombones" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/74-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="CNET" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/23-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="CSPAN" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/30-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="CSPAN2" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/31-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="Soulja Boy Tell Em TV" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/4100-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="Ataku" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/83-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="D40 Digital Camera" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/1346-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"
channel name="Bank of America" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/4101-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp"

Re:Anonymous Karma Whore

[Lewrker]

No pr0n ? ;( That's why they made it public.

Re:Anonymous Karma Whore

[shutdown -p now]

That's not the way to karma whore on Slashdot. To get the most out of it, you have to mark the porn channels!

I never thought I would see...

[Darundal]

...a slashdot thread that consisted almost entirely of people arguing over what metaphor would be used to describe a situation.

Re:I never thought I would see...

[Joe the Lesser]

You must be new here.

Re:I never thought I would see...

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably because the TV content is shit.

Re:I never thought I would see...

[kryten_nl]

Yeah, that's like: When you leave your car unlocked and someone else starts exercising in there. Or: Someone breaking into a library by walking through the automatically sliding doors during opening hours.

In other news....

[Bruce McBruce]

God sues people for breathing His air.

Re:URL is an address no copyright Promotional Effo

[K. S. Kyosuke]

One thing is very funny: In my country, it is (as stated explicitly in the law) perfectly legal to download (for personal use - i. e., "don't redistribute!") copyrighted works that have been made publicly available (*), just as you can record a radio broadcast on a tape or a TV show on a VCR. I am wondering what they would try to claim *here*. :-) If they are unable to control access to their media resources, well, it's none of my business.

(*) Suprisingly, this is OK even it the "publisher" is violating law, like some (many :-)) RapidShare uploaders - but in this case it's MobiTV who are being stupid :-)

Preventing receiving revenue ? wrong

[dpbsmith]

Pssst! Listen up! I've just discovered that an address where you can access intellectual property for free! The address is 700 Boylston St., Boston MA 02116. You know what? Between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. every day they leave the door unlocked! That's right! You can walk right in!

And you know what you'll find? Millions and millions of books, including current bestsellers like Stephen King's Duma Key. Yep, you can just take it right off the shelf, sit down, and read it right there. Instead of paying $17 to $28 dollars, you can read it for free!

In fact, with a Massachusetts driver's license and a little sweet-talk it's not at all hard to do social engineering on the guy at the security desk and talk him into giving you an access card that will let you take that book right through security, right out of the building! For three weeks or more.

Is it a hack? Not really.

Does it allow people to read books that they didn't pay for? Yes

Does it prevent Scribners from receiving revenue that it would otherwise have received? Yes.

Is it wrong? No.

Re:Preventing receiving revenue ? wrong

[suso]

Pssst! Listen up! I've just discovered that an address where you can access intellectual property for free! The address is 700 Boylston St., Boston MA 02116. You know what? Between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. every day they leave the door unlocked! That's right! You can walk right in!

I don't know who is more foolish, you for posting this or the fool who modded you as Insightful. I think you're being serious.

In case it wasn't obvious to you two, there are these things called taxes (no not Texas, taxes) that pay for a lot of government services. We've had taxes around for millennia to help subsidize nice things for the public to use. And some not so nice things for public abuse.

Re:Preventing receiving revenue ? wrong

[mr_Spook]

That sounds like a library. You know that only crooks check out books, right? Libraries are massive pools of organized theft! It is wrong to learn things without paying for them!

Re:Preventing receiving revenue ? wrong

[dpbsmith]

OK, let me spell it out for you. Taxes pay for the library to buy _one_ copy of the book. _Twenty_ people read that copy, but the publisher only gets paid _once_. That's not wrong, that's the way the established laws regarding books and libraries and copyrights and "right of first sale" play out.

How are books any different from recordings or video streams or what have you? The simple answer is, they aren't. The only difference is that the shock and impact of book technology occurred centuries ago, and the law and societal bargains about books were all hashed out and codified long ago.

Every time someone invents new media, the publishers of that media initially believe that this time they can strike a completely one-sided bargain. They're always wrong, and eventually they realize that their profits don't actually depend on it.

It's hard to believe it now, but theatrical showings of motion pictures are priced based on attendance, and, originally, the movie studios objected to home VCR showings even of prerecorded tapes, because, they said, "we have no way of knowing how many people are in the room." They would have liked to enforce a business model in which four viewers meant four rental payments.

Re:Preventing receiving revenue ? wrong

[Muchsake]

Does it prevent Scribners from receiving revenue that it would otherwise have received? Yes.

WRONG - At least it is in the UK where libraries pay a lot higher price for books than the general public in order to compensate copyright holders for lost revenue due to library loans. I learnt about this when I found out that the scheme was extended to video libraries who were paying £60 for a video available in the shops for £15.

Give me a break!

[Babu 'God' Hoover]

If you don't want people looking at your naked ass all day, put your pants on in the morning.

Chumps

[hairykrishna]

How many people read HowardForums anyway? If they insist on relying on security through obscurity, then taking legal action that lands the url on the front page of slashdot is probably not their smartest move.

Have we ever slashdotted a TV provider before?

Re:Just because they're stupid doesn't make themWr

[Missing_dc]

Something I have noticed so far:

Everyone here complains that they should just fix it....
perhaps in an effort to make it available to more users/devices (since it IS geared towards cell and smart phones) they did not encrypt it or make users go through a crazy registration/validation process. There are some phones that might not support the security (lack of processing power?)and there are users that would not jump through all the hoops.

We seem to forget that most slashdotters are willing to forgo convenience for security, but most sheeple (general public) are not, thats part of why we see so many instances of "secure" information being sent through "unsecure" channels. Its too much of an inconvenience to the end users to encrypt.

Just a guess, but I bet the average /. IQ is about 125, while the average public IQ is about 95.

qtv.mobitv.com/sprintTVlive.mcd

[Anonymous Coward]

qtv.mobitv.com/sprintTVlive.mcd

free patents online

[kilraid]

Or you can go to the delphion patent server and append &page=0 to the end of the url to see the whole patent for which only the first page is supposed to be visible to non-paying customers. Hacking?

Analogy: physical bulletin board

[SlowMovingTarget]

Your "walking into a gym" metaphor doesn't really cut it at all. A real analogy might be, Alice puts up a notice on a public bulletin board. Alice really only intends for Bob to read the message, but she posts it in public in plain English.

Eve comes along, and posts another note on the bulletin board that points out where on the board Alice's message is. (Over to the left three feet an up ten inches...) Alice proceeds to throw a fit about Eve's message.

If you put an unencrypted document on the internet, you display it in public. If you serve a stream to anyone who hits a URL, you have made that stream public. If you must have a property analogy, it is as though the gym owner decided to put all their gym equipment in a public park with a notice that says "Use this."

l33t

[v3xt0r]

omg I h@x0r3d teh www.google.com, don't sue!

My thoughts

[Wakk013]

Probably others as well, not gonna weed through the long list already. Security through obscurity is no security at all. Basically, the persons have left their car not only in the middle of the parking lot unlocked, but the windows wide open for anyone to take. It is very illegal for someone else to steal it as that person does not own that vehicle. The police will arrest you, but your insurance my not cover the theft. Kinda get the picture? If the site has any type of disclosure or terms of use stating that using their URL in any way outside of their service is illegal, its illegal. You accept the terms of use or you don't. You go around the terms of use, you've just "hacked" the site. As for the re-occuring theme that I read above about freeloaders... If its not illegal, then why not? If it is, people probably need to be educated. If they persist even after education, yeah then they are in for a world of hurt due to their own actions. Face up to your actions and take responsiblity. If not, well... no one is perfect.

tollbooth

[Joe The Dragon]

Hear is one you drive up to open tollbooth and there is no one to take your toll and the lane had it's green light on?

The URL

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is the URL in case they take it down.

qtv.mobitv.com/sprintTVlive.mcd

and it's contents

Bikinis, lingerie, and less. Beach, Bedroom, Hot tub. MAXX Look ??? All Girls. All the time

Re:The URL

[Anonymous Coward]

<channel name="MSNBC" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/1-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="FOX News" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/8-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="Discovery" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/3-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="TLC" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/4-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="Animal Planet" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/63-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="NBC Comedy" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/1500-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="ESPN Mobile TV" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/4103-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="NBC Sports Mobile" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/1513-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="Lipstick Jungle" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/1508-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="Maxx Look" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/48-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<description>
Bikinis, lingerie, and less. Beach, Bedroom, Hot tub. MAXX Look ??? All Girls. All the time
</description>
<channel name="Toon World TV" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/28-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="Access Hollywood" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/1515-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="Love Laffs" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/4104-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="Bloomberg" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/52-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="Tim Gunns Guide to Style" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/1519-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="The Mic Hip Hop" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/910-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="V40 Hot Hits" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/911-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="Totally 80s 90s" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/96-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="Double Z Country" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/72-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="RandB Jamz" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/425-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="Ritmo Caliente" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/97-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="Chaos Extreme" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/913-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="Shift Alternative" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/912-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="USA Mobile" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/1503-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="Bravo To Go" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/1502-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="SCI FI Pulse Mobile" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/1501-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="Oxygen" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/58-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="Discovery Mobile" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/53-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="A and E Mobile" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/17-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="The History Channel Mobile" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/19-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="NBC News Mobile" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/2-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="Fashion TV" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/22-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="Comedy Time" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/21-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="MAXX SPORTS" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com/50-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="IGN" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/59-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="Bombones" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/74-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="CNET" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/23-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="CSPAN" href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/30-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">
<channel name="CS

stupid idiots

[rice_burners_suck]

If they don't want people to access a URL, they should take technical steps to prevent it from being accessed. An accessible URL is an invitation to use a service on that server. Having an accessible URL and then sending stupid legal letters is akin to putting an "Open House" sign in front of your house and then calling the police and pressing burglary charges when someone comes in.

The "Free" disease

[suso]

From reading the responses to my own post, I can clearly see that we have a major problem in society today. The ability to casually get stuff that isn't yours and get away with on such a wide scale has severely eroded people's morality. At some point the cycle of money driving the ability of companies to give things away or be taken away will dry up. What will happen then?

Re:The "Free" disease

[yabba-dabba-do]

You obviously don't get the whole idea behind the Internet. It was created as a method for free exchange of information and ideas. In fact, I remember a time when ALL information on the web was indeed free. I only paid for bandwidth. Then, some people decided to start to charge for content as well. Now, how do we tell the difference between what is avalable as free information exchange and what we need to pay for? Simple, the owner of the content puts measures in place that force us to pay for the content. The default is that it is free. No security means the owner wants us to view it.

Re:The "Free" disease

[PlusFiveTroll]

Jesus H. Crist, this was modified as insightful.

The problem with IP (intellectual property) is it should have been called imaginary property. The material costs of reproducing IP are close to $0.00. Compare this with making a hamburger, lets say the material costs of the first hamburger are $1. By the very nature of physical things, the costs of the second burger will be $1.

Theft of real property as always been a problem throughout history, didn't seem to stop humans from getting this far, and we know a thing or two about physical securty these days. Some companies will go bankrupt when the value of imaginary property is corrected. If no one is willing to pay for what you produce, then the value of your product is $0. If what you produce can be replicated for almost nothing, then the value of your product is far closer to $0 then most people would like to accept. Smart people will figure out how to give stuff away and make money at the same time, they're doing it now ;).

Are you an artist or musician? Do you realize they've starved(ok, not been rich) most of history and were given money by their governments or rich philanthropist?

Re:The "Free" disease

[shutdown -p now]

The ability to casually get stuff that isn't yours and get away with on such a wide scale has severely eroded people's morality.

Morality is not something preset - rather, it's defined by the society. If most people don't think that it's immoral to do something, then, well, it's not.

At some point the cycle of money driving the ability of companies to give things away or be taken away will dry up. What will happen then?

Companies whose business models depend of selling something that isn't meant to be generally sold (e.g.: air, intellectual property...) will either switch to something else, or die out. The rest of the world will go on as usual. We probably won't even notice long until after the fact ("Hm, when was the last time I've seen a music CD for sale? Can't remember already, it must have been quite few years ago"). It's not the first time a business model dies out, and it probably won't be the last. Fortunarely, humans are very adaptable species.

Even better analogy

[oyenstikker]

Imagine you run a movie theater. You hire a guy to stand at the door and instruct him that when people come up and say "Can I pretty please watch this movie that is playing in theater 3 right now" he should say yes, open the door, and let them in.

Now imagine that you send legal threats to the people who asked and were granted admission, and your argument is "I didn't mean to tell my employee to let you in."

---

Imagine you run a movie streaming company. You buy a web server and instruct it that when people send a request asking to stream the movie at /foo/bar.mpg it should say yes, and start streaming the movie?

Now imagine that you send legal threats to the people who asked and were granted access to the stream, and your argument is "I didn't mean to configure my web server to give you the stream."

---

Hacking would be when you tap the employee on the shoulder from behind, hit him with a bat when he turns around, and go watch the movie.

123 and counting . . .

[moeinvt]

123 matches on Google as of 1:28 EST.

It's going to be fun watching this proliferate.

We Are Missing the Bigger Picture

[acvh]

Having downloaded the file, which amusingly is still available, and persued its contents, I have the following question: Who the hell watches Lipstick Jungle on a cell phone? Who the hell watches Lipstick Jungle? What IS Lipstick Jungle? Whose mind is so vacant that they have to get a TV fix on their mobile phone?

As for the website itself, their complaint is rather like a bank putting all of their customers' account balances on a webserver, and then complaining when someone looks at someone else's account. Yes, the action is dickish at best, but the fact that it can be carried out is dickisher.

Now the whole world knows how stupid MobiTV is!

[yeswap]

MobiTV will lose and their files are now all over the internet. Serves them right for: a: stupidity in not securing the URLs b: attacking the messenger HoFo, a hugely popular site resulting in a major PR disaster. I don't see this going much further. I wonder if Howard can sue MobiTV for defamation?

Accessibility vs. Security

[sarysa]

To be fair, mobile phones still have a lot of kinks to work out, and security measures could render services unusuable on many devices. Just think about the time complexity involved with real-time decryption which would be one possible solution, phones can't handle this. You can't really criticize them for this, as the mobile space is a bit chaotic right now and they had to make a business decision: Lose revenue by not supporting several popular phones, or let a few geeks get free TV. I'd say they made the right choice.

Re:Accessibility vs. Security

[DarkOx]

Look, basic authentication would have been pretty effective. Even if it were sending the device ESN as the username and some account number as a password. Its not like it easy for me or most users to put a packet sniffer on the cellular network. I don't know if there service was web based or if it had a fatter client on the device in either case:

1. Any browser even on a mobile phone can be expected to support baisc plain text authentication....

2. Any first semester idot programer should be able to handle the simple string manipulation to pull off basic authentication over sockets with a standard web browser.

Had they done at least this then they could make the resonable claimb that their service was being abused/hacked if people started watching on non phone devices. Secon the Apache auth log would have been possibly interesting for data-mining. You'd know which customers watched, rather then what ip watched what.

There would have been alot to gained by using at least basic auth and it would not have been much development effort to make it work on most devices. You are after all already playing digital video from a stream; and you want me to belive that you can do that reliably across a wide range of devices but you can't manage CHAP?

The Daily WTF...

[amccaf1]

The Daily WTF published an article very similar to this, where a web site's "security" model involved simply having a user fill in their username and password (which was processed by client-side javascript) and then forwarding them to an unsecured URL. WTF Security.

When the article's author pointed out to the company how bad their security was, he was accused of "hacking" in. A very, very funny article...

TOS violation

[AnomaliesAndrew]

Experts Exchange intentionally reveals the responses to Google's spiders so that they get more search hits. IIRC, this is against Google's terms of service and is grounds for exclusion from results or reduction of relevance, but only seems to be enforced against people who abusively game Google in this way. NYTimes I think also was guilty of this with respect to Google's News search (but I'm not 100% sure on this.)

YANAL? Ask one!

[GCH]

Of course, you could ask a lawyer ... the general counsel's email is in the C&D letter. As a matter of fact, most of the suggestions here are so insightful and would provide the law firm with valuable information that I think all /.'ers should email the general counsel with their helpful advice.

How do I know that Slashdot is free?

[yooy]

I assumed it is but now I am not sure anymore...

Self righteous moron

[z80kid]

Get off your goddamn high horse, troll.

The C&D letter is not directed at unauthorized people using their service. It is directed at people publishing information about them and their service.

• Do they have a right to be pissed at people viewing their content? Arguably yes.

• Do they have legal recourse against those viewers? Possibly.

• Do they have a right to dictate what others may discuss about them and their service? No

There's nothing legal or moral about security by gag-order.

150 channels and nuthin on

[Anomalyst]

Did not see a single thing of sufficent interest to even warrent following the link.

Re:150 channels and nuthin on

[DaftShadow]

"Soulja Boy Tell Em TV" is good shit. Check it out.

Re:what about Experts Exchange?

[bostongraf]

So, the next logical question to ask would be if it is immoral/illegal to view the comments that are at the bottom of the page. EE did a very blatant job of letting you know that they require fee for the services they are providing, but have effectively left the door unlocked. While we may dislike how they conduct their business, would it not be considered stealing if we were to gleen the answers from them when they ask for payment?

How I Know When Something Is For Sale

[reallocate]

I know items on store shelves are for sale because they are, umm, in a store and have price tags. I know a web site with a public URL has something to sell when a box pops up and tells me what it costs and how to register and I can't otherwise get at the stuff gthe site is selling. I know a web site wih a public URL and something to sell was designed by someone without a clue when when nothing stands between me and the stuff that's being sold.

The best analogy here is this: A college town bar owner takes a truck full of six packs and sets them on the front steps of every frat house he can find, then calls the lawyers when he discovers the frat boys drank the beer without paying for it.

And now the URL is posted all over the internet

[Blackeagle_Falcon]

Did these people learn nothing from the Wikileaks debacle? Or the AACS encryption key mess? Sending cease-and-desist letters and DMCA takedown requests over this sort of information only results in it being distributed more widely and seen by far more people.

No, it's not wrong.

[geekoid]

"Does it prevent Verizon and MobiTV from receiving revenue that they should from the streams? Yes"

err.. No. or rather "Only if they would ahve paid for it anyways."

"Is it wrong? Yes"

Absolutely NOT wrong. It is not wrong to click on a publicly accessible link. That's what they are for. The only way to tell if someone doesn't want you to use a link is to secure the link.

Could I create a site called "myfamily.com" post a picture a took, and then sue anybody for linking to me site? no.

Charge MobiTV for QA testing

[Always Thinkin]

Maybe they should charge MobiTv for providing them with consultation on security matters and determining where holes in their web applications lie. And perhaps for load-testing the servers too...

The semantics in this are critical

[geekoid]

bacause they are used to convince law makers and the general public to pass draconian laws, and lock people up for unreasonable amounts of time.

It isn't steal, it's copyright infringement. There are two different terms for very good reasons. Copyright issues are very 'hot' right now so diluting and / or confusing the issue doesn't help.

Re:The semantics in this are critical

[mea37]

"Lock people up"? I'd be truly curious to hear of a case where someone is in prison for IP violations.

I don't believe that the use of the term "steal" has any impact on public policy as it relates to copyright, patent, trademark, etc. But then, what are you bitching at me for -- I just finished saying we should avoid language that detracts from the issues.

door analogies suck, but here goes

[Anonymous Coward]

But if we're stuck on them for whatever reason:

View the internet as a series of doors. Knock on any given door and you will get one of the following:

1. Nothing.
2. A request for authentication.
3. Something for free.

Some people believe all doors aren't equally easy to find, but this is basically an illusion.

The question is whether knockers can know whether or not they should knock on the door and, if so, whether they are ethically obligated to use this information responsibly.

Generally speaking, knockers have no mechanism for knowing whether or not they should knock on a door. Door-owners are asking knocks by putting doors in place. Otherwise having a door simply makes no sense. So I find it difficult to find knockers at fault, generally speaking.

In a specific case like this where a knocker knows that they are not supposed to be receiving something for free, it is fairly obvious the knocker is ethically challenged. While the knocker may not agree with the idea of intellectual property, there are other ethical considerations as well. Rare will be the knocker whose true ethical position allows him to use the services for free. By societies current standards the ethics are clear.

However, there is still value in an unethical knockers actions, if only to encourage door owners to put in the appropriate access controls.

Once a door owner is aware of the problem, failure to put proper controls in place is, IMHO, a decision to offer the service for free. Sending a cease and desist letter is well within a door owner's rights and may be an effective temporary solution to the door owner's mistake. However, I think 'pound sand' is also an appropriate response. Door owners can instantly and permanently remove or change the door so it responds differently. Knockers are not responsible for propping up the door owner while he or she fixes the problem. And supporting this cease and desist idea promotes door owner laziness.

I feel a bit silly now...but that's a cool tactic.

[pyrr]

I'd always just used Google's Cache feature to see the content. I figured if Google could see the content, since I was using Google to search & they offer the cache view to their users, I'd vicariously inherited the right to view what EE was trying to claim as premium content. So I guess I was taking a longer route than I needed to, but the highlighting of my search terms is usually worth the effort when sifting through a lot of garbage anyway. The main difference is that the version Google sees has a "View Solution" button at the bottom of the first post, where the "public" version of the site has a subscription sign-up link.

I don't think it's all that scummy though, it's clever. It's sort of like the "Obtain key from office to use elevator" sign that's posted outside the building elevator (primarily used for freight or disabled people) in one of my workplaces. The only keyhole I could see near the control was the test/override one that all elevators have, so I pushed the summoning button, and found the elevator to be fully functional sans key. Not only that, but it doesn't even have the current possibility of being locked-out in such a way as to require a key. But does it deter 95% of the people who walk by the elevator, who instead use the stairs? Yep.

It's the same sort of social engineering trickery, discourage people with something that is designed to be prima facie misleading, but is actually utterly irrelevant to anyone who wishes to observe and test the purported limit. Other, less amusing examples include the ubiquitous "beware of dog", "premises under surveillance", and "security provided by $alarm_company" signs that project an unnecessarily elevated notion of trespassing risk on private property.

C&D Letter signed by what judge?

[fishbowl]

See, the same guy could write a cease and desist letter to Slashdot editors, or the New York Times for that matter. Unless and until that letter is attached to a court order to cease and desist, there's no reason to even respond to it. You should read it. You should keep it. Because it can be used as evidence against the person who wrote it later. But if you act on the demand in the letter, you should only do so because you were inclined to take that same action to begin with.

For anyone who gives in to "pressure" from a mere C&D letter... you make your choices, and the letter is irrelevant.

Intended or not...

[Khyber]

This is still character assassination. They're calling this person a hacker when it's very clear they are not a hacker - no forceful breach of security happened, no bypassing security measures, no database information stolen, nothing except finding/stumbling upon an open, unsecured URL that some idiot webmaster didn't have the common sense to secure. The issue here is that we have idiots using words without knowing what they truly mean and as a result they are harming this person's reputation. Were this to stick, potential employers would not hire this person on reputation of being a 'hacker.'

The route to the destination is as important...

[pyrr]

...as the destination itself.

While MobiTV is apparently staffed by morons, and should probably make a stronger effort to secure their content, it would seem that even though what they claimed is proprietary information was hidden in plain sight, was discovered by use of a debugging tool in violation of their TOS. Almost every software license prohibits decompiling, reverse-engineering, and the like, because almost every secret in the most proprietary software is hidden in plain sight, if someone has the correct tools.

If MobiTV is correct that someone didn't just happen across that URL or received it in a normal browser error dump, and actually used an unauthorized debugging tool to obtain the URL, then they may have a leg to stand on. Information acquired through illegal means and leaked to the public DOES NOT public information make. And I'd say they may be well within their rights to demand the information be taken down...but sometimes what's within one's rights isn't necessarily prudent to act on (hello, Streisand Effect!). But of course, that ultimately assumes that the individual who leaked that URL information acquired it by violating a contract he agreed to somewhere along the lines. Just so long as the instructions to obtain that URL are (a) usable by anyone coming from a public starting point, and (b) don't involve taking an illegal action along the way to the ultimate destination of that media URL, there really doesn't seem to be any leg for MobiTV to stand on. However, if the destination URL cannot be reached under those conditions, it should probably be considered to be as stolen and illegal as the TV some guy is trying to sell from the back of his car. Just because you bought stolen goods in an open and public transaction doesn't mean the transaction was legal in the first place. In this example, the seller didn't have the legal right to sell the item, so he couldn't legally transfer ownership to you.

Yay analogies.

[Damocles the Elder]

I'd just like to point out that all of these (mostly crappy) analogies are very much the reason tech law is in the state it's in today. You really can't equivocate tech and the net with physical analogies. And it's because of explanations like this that the laws for these things are in the mess they're in.

Someone needs to sit down and say Yes, this is legal or No, this isn't legal without trying to equate it to stealing a book, or walking into a movie theatre, or whatever, and actually make a law out of it.

Personally, I'm with the it's-not-wrong-crowd-- if you want restricted access, you have to take the steps to make sure it's restricted. It's like--ah, nevermind. But seriously, one way or another, someone intelligent has to actually start ruling on this or we'll have people saying "It's like breaking into someone's car!" "Oh, it is? Okay, guilty!" from now until the heat death of the universe.

Cats out of the bag . . .

[fuzzylollipop]

I don't think taking down that forum is going to do any good, the information is free now, they will have to take down every forum and website on the internet now. What dumbasses for having a unsecured URL that hosts what they consider sensitive data. Well, I found this in the Sprint forums and here we go: qtv.mobitv.com/sprintTVlive.mcd 1. Copy and paste that link into the address bar. 2. Don't run it but save it to your computer. 3. Find it on your computer and OPEN it up. Select to open it with Internet Explorer or the browser of your choice. 4. There will be a whole bunch of links. Choose the channel you want to watch... 5. Get your LG Voyager and start up the browser. 6. Type one of the links into your Voyager and press OK! There you go, live TV... Ask more questions if you need help.

Re:Cats out of the bag . . .

[fuzzylollipop]

Looks like they have eventually blocked access to that url :-)

When does a URL become secure?

[zookie]

Let's say MobiTV had been a *little* smarter and required authentication credentials to be passed on the URL Now, this blog posts a link to

http://mobitv.com/videos?userid=john&password=abc123

Would you consider that a hack or stealing? He's obviously circumventing the security of the system by using stolen credentials. Yet, isn't this a "publicly accessible URL"?

Re:When does a URL become secure?

[Ken_g6]

I would say, no, that's not a hack. Even if the values were required to come from a POST operation instead of a GET like that, I'd say it's not stealing. All that's required is monitoring your own network. If my network used IPP (Internet Pigeon Protocol), I could occasionally grab a pigeon and read what was on its packet - in cleartext - before sending it on.

The URL has to be https:/// with authentication before I'd call it a hack. Reading it then requires a man-in-the-middle attack, lying to the remote server, which is probably enough to call it a hack. But it is still on my own network, so an argument could be made against that being a "hack", too.

From TDWTF...

[magus_melchior]

So You Hacked Our Site!?

I think someone should trademark the term "Hacking," as people take it to mean both "trespassing online" and "breaching our illusion of security."

Reminds me of...

[JWSmythe]

This reminds me of the real early days of web sites. Just past when people were excited about being able to put "hello world" up, and when they started charging people for content.

    "Secure" pages, were usually some obscure web page under the main site. Security was that your members are was called http://example.com/members_mysecret .

    And then people started getting smarter. Oh my gosh, that .htaccess actually can actually control access. But what do we do about the crappy billing company that doesn't actually give you login information, they just tell you to protect by HTTP_REFERER? :)

    If this happened on all the super-kewl-elite hax0r sites, then the good old C&D wouldn't be doing much good, they'd be crying about how the hackers have infiltrated their security.

    It does make me feel nostalgic, thinking of the folks who thought http://example.com/members_mysecret would always protect them.

    So my advice. Suck it up, and hire someone who knows at least something about security, and make your application work securely, if you don't want the whole world to use your content. :) You can't blame Howard for your own security problem. Would "Bank of America" be able to blame the hackers, if there was a super secret file called http://bankofamerica.com/all_customer_info.3.7.2008.zip ?

yet another analogy

[whtvr]

i'd say the best analogy would be something like this: imagine an outdoor gig (for example a car cinema or whatever they call them), there's a stage and audience area - it's all surrounded by a fence and they charge you if you want to enter; but there's a hill just outside the fence from which you can perfectly see and hear the whole performance; so would it be right to prosecute people for standing on that hill for not buying the ticket? or perhaps the whole thing should be design in a way that you cannot see/hear anything from that hill? couldn't think of anything better... i would probably found myself standing in the crowd on the hill, where would you be?

the reason why i thought of this is we had something similar in my home town - an outdoor theater; and while you couldn't see or hear performances from outside of the fence there were apartment blocks just next to the theater and every time there was a concert or any other event you could see whole families standing in the windows or on the balconies and i don't remember anybody charging them for tickets... just a side story and my two (euro) cents...

greetings

p.s. i didn't bother going through all the comments so if there's already something similar posted by fellow slashdotter well... bear with me

So, am I hacking mobitv too?

[HybridJeff]

I reformatted the links to work in Firefox, am I a l33t hacker now too? Fox News MSNBC Discovery TLC Animal Planet NBC Comedy HD - NBC Comedy ESPN Mobile NBC Sports Mobile Lipstick Jungle HD - Lipstick Jungle Maxx Look HD - Maxx Look Toon World TV HD - Toon World TV Access Hollywood HD - Access Hollywood Love Laffs HD - Love Laffs Bloomberg Tim Gunns Guide to Style HD - Tim Gunns Guide to Style The Mic Hip Hop HD - The Mic Hip Hop V40 Hot Hits HD - V40 Hot Hits Totally 80s 90s HD - Totally 80s 90s Double Z Country HD - Double Z Country RandB Jamz HD - RandB Jamz Chaos Extreme HD - Chaos Extreme Shift Alternative HD - Shift Alternative USA Mobile HD - USA Mobile Bravo Mobile HD - Bravo Mobile SciFi Mobile HD - SciFi Mobile Oxygen HD - Oxygen Discovery Mobile HD - Discovery Mobile A&E Mobile HD - A&E Mobile The History Channel Mobile HD - The History Channel Mobile NBC News Mobile HD - NBC News Mobile Fashion TV Comedy Time HD - Comedy Time Maxx Sports HD - Maxx Sports IGN

Re:So, am I hacking mobitv too?

[peektwice]

mod parent up, this is good shit

a parable

[skywire]

A man puts up a billboard at a certain intersection in a great city containing a pornographic image that some people would be willing to pay gold to see. He builds a business plan around the simple-minded assumption that most citizens who have not paid him will remain unaware of the billboard's existence and location. An observant charioteer names the street address in his weekly news scroll, telling the strange story of the owner's simplemindedness concerning people's ability to buy chariots, travel on the public streets, and direct their attention at billboards standing out in public view. The owner feels some embarrassment at his weak-headedness being made known, and sends forth his legal counsel to the imperial authorities to accuse the driver of the arcane crime of Infringing Intellectual Property, which being translated into common tongue is Interfering with a Business Plan, thereby bringing even greater embarrassment to the scribe, who must endure his shallow knowledge of the law being made known to myriads of people far and wide.

It's all over now

[Faeton]

http://www.howardforums.com/showpost.php?p=10770497&postcount=561
okay guys. I just had a conversation with the president of MobiTV. He had this to say:

Quote: Howard, great catching up today. Again, we're big fans of the sight and our intention was never to bring your entire sight down or to "censor the Internet" like we're being accused. The irony is that is quite the opposite type of company we are and as one of the leaders in new media, we couldn't be more supportive of the rights of sights like yours. Please know that our first priority is always to fix any security issues with our system and we're doing that. Additionally, we also have a responsibility to our content and carrier partners to reduce the impact of any breaches to the system once they occur and that was really the basis for the correspondence you had with our legal team.
I look forward to continuing to find interesting and vibrant insights from HowardForums.
Best regards, Paul Scanlan Cofounder, President

So I guess everything is okay now. Thank you all for your support!

Re:Is this what you want?

[gratemyl]

I tend to agree with you in all but one point:

(...) we would all need written permission to visit each site.

Verbal or implied permission is sufficient to visit another person's house, so why not somebody else's website?

Just my $.02

MobiTV = idiots

[mikeinwa]

I already emailed MSNBC and let them know that MobiTV is distributing their channel with zero security causing them to lose revenue. Hopefully they'll light a fire under their ass. :D

It's a request, silly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your analogies all fall apart because they ignore the fact that these are requests.

The idea of an illegal HTTP request makes sense only when those requests are actual cracking attempts (e.g. SQL injection). Any other HTTP request must be seen as legal simply because it is a request. Making these illegal would be like making it illegal to ask a business for a freebie or discount. Such an idea is clearly absurd since no one is harmed merely by asking.

Legally speaking, if you ask a representative of a company for a freebie and receive it, you have not broken the law - even if you believe the representative should not have given you the freebie. The exceptions to this are when you know the employee is not authorized to give you the freebie. For instance, receiving a free TV from a stock boy at Target would probably not be legal. Asking for free money by waving a gun is clearly not legal. And it would not be legal to ask an employee you know personally to give you a discount or freebie you know he or she is not authorized to give.

Since a server is effectively an unknown representative of a company faithfully following clearly defined rules, asking it for something and receiving it is tantamount to the company authorizing your request. It doesn't really matter whether some people on a forum believe the server should not be handing out the information. Those people do not represent the company!

Once another company representative contacts you, well, then you know there is a problem with their representative and ethically (and perhaps legally) you should stop telling people about this great deal. However, if the company fails to do anything about this representative I would be very surprised if they have any legal standing since they clearly knew exactly what the representative was doing and took no action to stop it.

I am not sure I would go this far, but some certainly could argue that no authorization mechanism of any kind on the public internet is not possibly a "mistake" and so the company was - in fact - authorizing their representative to give away this information.

Re:It's a request, silly.

[tkinnun0]

Any other HTTP request must be seen as legal simply because it is a request. Making these illegal would be like making it illegal to ask a business for a freebie or discount. Such an idea is clearly absurd since no one is harmed merely by asking. One word: DDOS.

Or, for those only able to think in analogies: it's like you and 500 of your friends going to a McDonald's, forming a line and then everyone asking for a freebie in turn until everyone gets one.

Or it's like the Mafia asking for protection money, there's no harm in that?

It seems to me...

[LuNa7ic]

That the webmaster of howardforums.com should sue MobiTV for 'making available; after all thats the real crime here (just ask the RIAA)

Proper way to handle this?

[Workaphobia]

Question: what should mobitv have done to limit access? Password protect with a single global authentication token for all devices? Individual tokens for each subscriber? Going a step further to replace tokens with keys and encrypt the connection? How would this token/key information be protected on the device, assuming there's no hardware support for this?

I agree that there should be no ethical or legal implications tied to the action of sending an HTTP GET to a server, no matter the url (and excluding cases like DoS), but what would you consider the minimum level of "protection" to warrant calling unauthorized access a hack (or to phrase that better, to warrant calling the access howardforum's users performed "unauthorized")?

HowardForums: "Everything is cool now"

[Schnoodledorfer]

I guess the S&D got retracted. More info here. Damn! Just when you think there's going to be a good fight! What I want to know, now, is how does someone become the President of an Internet media company and still think a forum is a web sight.

Hang on just a fucking second

[Hektor_Troy]

If I had made a mistake like this, publicly sharing something in a way that wasn't agreed to by the copyright holders, I'd be sued into the ground for filesharing.

Even without knowing the specifics of their contracts, I'm willing to bet that they're paying for every paying customers - not for every non-paying customer.

That means they're filesharers - filthy pirates who have to pay 150,000 US$ per incident of filesharing.

Just Slashdot alone is probably responsible for a few thousand incidents like this ... well, you probably know where I'm going with this.

But of course, that's not how the world works, is it?

security

[Fuzzums]

Lesson #1. If your company sucks at security, blame it on the hackers.

Re:what about Experts Exchange?

[Nullav]

Nonsense! After all, it's already on your hard drive in your browser cache. That would be like someone giving you a book and making you pinky swear not to read beyond the title before joining their super-secret club. I refuse to consider it stealing when the 'object' has effectively been given to me.

This entire thread is just silly. There exist a myriad of ways to protect content on the Internet, a simple .htpasswd file comes to mind in this situation. Taking action against people for redistributing the content is understandable and encouraged, but taking action against people for pointing out (linking) something you're distributing on your network is absolutely laughable.

works from China too, and on my Nokia phone!

[dwater]

Yeah, now at least I can understand what they're saying on TV. It's still crap, but at least I can understand it.

FYI, I'm using a Nokia E90, but any S60 phone should do :

1) start the 'Gallery' application
2) select 'Streaming links'
3) 'Options', 'New link'
4) select either 'Phone memory' or your memory card (whatever it's called) - I selected my memory card - then 'OK'
5) Enter a name for the stream, say the channel name that's in the file - eg "A and E Mobile", then 'OK'
6) Enter the URL as is in the file, including the rtsp:// - then 'ok'

then you get an entry in your 'streaming links' list, which you can click on. That will inform you that a connection to the server is needed and ask if that's ok - press 'ok' (if it's ok).

It didn't work the first time for me because I had the default access point set to a network that wasn't accessible. I'm using wifi, of course - yymv on a cell network (perhaps they block various ports).

09 f9 11...

[Arancaytar]

Have these people learned nothing from past mistakes?