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Coders Develop Ways To Defeat SOPA Censorship
Hugh Pickens writes "The Atlantic reports that one developer who doesn't have much faith in Congress making the right decision on anti-piracy legislation has already built a workaround for the impending censorship measures being considered, and called it DeSOPA. Since SOPA would block specific domain names (e.g. www.thepiratebay.com) of allegedly infringing sites, T Rizk's Firefox add-on allows you to revert to the bare internet protocol (IP) address (e.g. 194.71.107.15) which takes you to the same place. 'It could be that a few members of Congress are just not tech savvy and don't understand that it is technically not going to work, at all,' says T Rizk. 'So here's some proof that I hope will help them err on the side of reason and vote SOPA down.' Another group called 'MAFIAAFire' decided to respond when Homeland Security's ICE unit started seizing domain names, by coding a browser add-on to redirect the affected websites to their new domains. More than 200,000 people have already installed the add-on. ICE wasn't happy, and asked Mozilla to pull the add-on from their site. Mozilla denied the request, arguing that this type of censorship may threaten the open Internet."
So it's like MafiaaFire/FireIce for SOPA, just like a little custom HOSTS file in the form of a browser addon.
Technically not brilliant but a good political move, to demonstrate the futility of this legislation.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If SOPA passes, this might actually make me switch back to Firefox from Chrome. Of course, I'd have to download the plugin before it got stomped by a SOPA claim.
My sources tell me that evildoers possess advanced ICMP technology that would allow a pirate to verify whether or not a forbidden server is active, among other criminal surveillance, from anywhere in the Homeland!
Honestly, there really is no way to stop people from getting around every roadblock you put down. Walls can only stretch so far. The only way to prevent them from doing what they want is to either destroy the internet or kill everyone in the country. The first could even be worked around with possibly WiFi meshes or usb drop locations.
If the government decides to do the second, well, can't exactly get around that when you're dead.
If meddling with DNS doesn't work, network operators will simply be forced to block at the IP level, e.g. by withdrawing the BGP routes to the censored sites. Good luck circumventing this kind of blocking (still possible with proxies, and maybe distributed anonymous p2p proxies, but a nuisance anyway).
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Or maybe now we'll see the race to buy "easy" IP addresses. "Visit us at 12.34.56.78".
Now, thinking again, that could actually halt the long-awaited migration to IPv6. Who'd like to see an ad like "find our products at http://200147023aef0/. Please remember the square brackets or you won't reach our website. And the double colon between 470 and 23. Unless you want to fill the omitted zeroes."
Guess who will win?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
What's to stop me from entering the IP address without the add-on?
Several things.
First, you have to know the IP address. The point of one of the the plug-ins, as far as I understand it, is that it automatically gets the list of known seized host names and IP addresses for you.
Second is that entering the IP manually presumes that an IP address only has one web host on it. This is far from true - with dynamic hosting, lots of domains share the same IP address. It's by the browser sending "Host: www.somewhere.foo" in the header of the request that the web server knows which host's content to serve you. "Host: NNN.NNN.NNN.NNN" is likely only going to give you the hosting provider's web page, or even just a generic "Welcome to Apache" page for those who haven't configured it.
Oh, and third, have fun entering IPv6 addresses that way...
"So here's some proof that I hope will help them err on the side of reason and vote SOPA down"
Eh... no. If the war against drugs/piracy/terrorism has taught us anything, it is that if the law makers were made to understand that it won't work, they would just try more draconian measures.
By all means, petition them in terms of freedom of speech, cost or restricting innovation, arguing that "The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through" will simply make them tighten their grip further.
Nothing prevents a plugin from sending additional HTTP headers (e.g. the Host: header) once the TCP connection has been established to the IP address. No DNS intervention is needed for this.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Aren't dozens of domains often hosted on single IPs?
"'It could be that a few members of Congress are just not tech savvy and don't understand that it is technically not going to work, at all"
Most congress critters don't have even a clue as to how the internet in general works. Honestly the lack of education with these idiots is staggering.
Congress today is a large group of poorly educated, self serving, sociopath children.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Nothing prevents a plugin from sending additional HTTP headers (e.g. the Host: header) once the TCP connection has been established to the IP address. No DNS intervention is needed for this.
Um, you didn't read the post I was replying to, did you? That was exactly my point - a plugin can do that, but manually entering the IP address instead of using a plugin won't.
And no, the Host: header isn't an additional header - it's a required header (for HTTP/1.1 and above). So a plugin have better replace the Host header that the browser sets, not add one.
The obvious solution to this is to register domain names at a rate faster than the government can ban them. Do this until all possible combinations of words have been used and there are no free domain names.
Just point your DNS to 8.8.8.8
Bot Assisted Blogging
I suspected someone would do this since they were basing blocking on domain. essentially SOPA will kill DNS.
people will begin passing raw addresses/ports to each other and you will end up with another dark-net, one where there are no domain names or to access it you have to get a hold of a domain file for a plug in.
soon there will be sites dedicated to the pirate DNS then there will be assholes who distribute bad DNS files leading to pages with drive by attacks. peges will be fighting over their old domain names since there will be no registrar for this dark net.
this security issue will likely push the P2P DNS efforts already in place.
we in the rest of the world could stop using american resources on the internet.
and yes, that includes me no to visit slashdot.org anymore.
Back to the good old hosts file.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_(file)
Maybe we will create cron-jobs again to download the newest hosts file from some trusted source.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
Heh... I was actually musing about how to do this with music. After all, there are only so many combinations of notes - why not have computer programs just generating all possible single measures, then all possible combinations of those measures, and publishing them all online with a claimed copyright? (In the US at least, you don't have to spend money to register a work to obtain a copyright - you actually inherently have the copyright. Registering does have benefits though - but it's not required.)
Essentially, beat them at their own game. (And at the same time prove the silliness of it all. You could probably do the same with works of text as well by using a grammar generator to get legitimate sentences.)
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
This legislation, combined with the recent domain seizures by ICS, highlights a weakness in the current DNS system: it's far too centralized and way too subject to censorship by governments. Rather than individual, browser-based workarounds, we need a completely new DNS system that is based on some form of distributed computing and lacks a central point of failure. Given the presence of existing protocols like BitTorrent, Tor, and Bitcoin, this should be possible to do.
Wouldn't this break sites hosted on a shared IP address with multiple domain names?
Isn't ironic that in Portuguese, "SOPA" means "soup"?
You only infringe upon copyright if you actually copy. If you come up with the same melody by chance, it is not a violation of copyright. I am sure the MAFIAAs lawyers can argue that their song is not derived from your database.
Speaking about DNS blocking and DNS names. How large would a full dump of the whole DNS system actually be? From the numbers I could gather it be in the low GB range for all the top level domains and easily fit on a DVD, i.e. a rather trivial size in the days of movie streaming. How much bigger would it get by including all the subdomains (I assume you'd need a spider to actually gather those)? How big would daily updates be? In essence would it be possible to just completely bypass the classic DNS and move to one big hosts file on the local computer? Also is it possible to actually publicly download the TLD zone file? Verisign seems to offer it, but not publicly.
Lol... So are you a troll or what?
...
You misunderstand. I wasn't saying that generic Internet access is impossible in those countries. Even porn in countries like Iran isn't something that's hard to get. What is really, really hard to get is an Internet connection that won't prompt the visits of various burly men in street clothes if you decide to talk about how much better the country would be under a new political system.
VPN proxies are nice, but are the first things to be stopped when things get hairy (and yes, I also have friends in the countries I listed - except NK).
Finally, you are also operating under the assumption that countries won't be able to cooperate on these matters. Look at the US: it's implementing the same technologies that the most repressive countries are implementing. Yes, the goals are still somewhat different, but I can guarantee you that once these legal structures are available in all countries, the Internet will not be able to route around damage, because the damage will be applied to the entire Internet.
Read Lessig's book Code is Law. It makes the interesting observation that code is law - and that consequently, law is code.
The only alternatives will be encrypted darknets, private nets and other things, but those are not the Internet anymore.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I am sure the MAFIAAs lawyers can argue that their song is not derived from your database.
Though woe betide you if your algorithm happens to generate a song that is already held by them. Because of course that is totally different and you owe them a billion dollars.
After all, there are only so many combinations of notes
Yeah, have you worked out just how many? Assuming 4 bars of quarter notes and using one chromatic octave (12 notes) and rests: 665,416,609,183,179,841 permutations. And that's only tiny proportion of all realistic possibilities.
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
This is asymmetrical warfare in cyberspace, except all the resources of congress don't count for squat here. Even a small group of motivated and skilled hackers can defeat anything congress can throw at them because congress has no conception of how technology works. Even the contractors they hire are not skilled (ever see a government IT project?). FBI? Please, would a skilled programmer work on cool stuff in the free market for more than six figures or for $50K and more bureaucracy and drudgery than you can shake a stick at at the FBI? Let's stop propagating the "government is omnipotent" meme.
Incidentally the Berlin Wall didn't fall for the reason you stated. I was there then. It fell because Hungary and Czechoslovakia stopped closing their borders to Austria and thousands of East Germans decided to "vacation" there. They crossed over, caught a bus north and hey presto were in the west. East Germany couldn't stop them because of warsaw pact treaties and because russia under gorbachev wouldn't change them. So the government of erich honneker destabilized, was replaced with egon krenz, who in a bid to stop the whole country emptying out opened the wall so easterners could visit and come back. That is why it fell.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
These cowboys better be careful when messing with ICE, it could be black.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Mozilla denied the request, arguing that this type of censorship may threaten the open Internet.
With all the BS that's coming out of Mozilla these days, glad to see they still can do some things right.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
The all the labels will start writing songs based on Vogon Poetry. I bet with the right marketing machine behind it, it could get quite popular.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Incorrect. The current version of the hosts file spec, given in RFC 952, was issued in 1985. The first version of Windows to actually utilize a hosts file was Windows 3.1, released in 1992. Unix-like systems had been using /etc/hosts for many years by that point. For what it's worth, RFC 952 obsoleted an older form of the hosts file specification, that dates all the way back to 1974... somewhat before *ANY* version of Windows had been written or even imagined. Both Mac and Linux currently utilize /etc/hosts.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
No, not much different than using hosts, except it automatically gets you the correct IP address for the site you're trying to access whereas with hosts file you have to get it manually and enter it there, first. Sounds a lot handier that way, but then again, that totally ruins your trolling argument :/
There is a finite number but it's a very large finite number that is is intrinsically dependent on the length of the song. Long songs means more and more combinations.
Each octave has 8 pitches (ignoring flats and sharps) and there are at least 10 durations (4x whole, 2x whole, whole, 1/2 whole, 1/4 whole, 1/8 whole, 1/16 whole, 1/32 whole, 1/64 whole, 1/128 whole) for any give note, though you can bridge notes together for a single note. In addition to that you can consider that there's a 9th "pitch" which is no sound. There are a very large number of combinations for just a single measure (8 note lengths, 9 note types). Using only quarter notes and rests you have 9^4 (6561) combinations for a single measure for a single octave. Push it out to 3 measures and its 9^12 combinations for that octave.
Let's say you have a 3 minute song at 120 beats per minute (that's probably pretty average for most MAFIAA stuff). Using 4 beat measures you would have 90 measures. One octave, one instrument and you're at 9^90 (7.6x10^85) combinations of quarter notes/rests. That's for a very bland song.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Sorry.... I meant the most recent version of the hosts file spec was RFC 952, not the current one, which is somewhat modified from that, and does not, I think, have any formal RFC spec. Nonetheless, it was still utilized for quite a few years before Windows first used it.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I may have had my math wrong.... and wildly understimated the total combinations of quarter notes.
90 measures = 360 quarter notes
A 90 measure song would have 9^390 combinations for a single octave.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
9^360 combinations, god damnit.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Yes, but only so many of those combinations "sound good" - you can probably algorithmically eliminate ones that would make no sense. After all, the goal would be to "protect" the good music, not the "noise."
Rules of music theory are simple enough to dramatically reduce the number of combinations.
(I never said such a thing would be practical, just that it would be theoretically possible. I actually got the idea from the little short story about "society that never forgets" and the unintended consequences of indefinite copyright.)
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
It's not brilliant period.
Now go back under your rock you fool.
Servers will cry if you access them via IP when they are doing name-based virtual hosts (eg pretty much anything that isn't dedicated to one domain)
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
The other day I decided to send a note to my senator urging him not to pass SOPA.
Here's the response I got. It made me sad.
Dear Joshua,
Thank you for contacting me regarding S. 968, the Protect IP Act.
Intellectual property industries employ more than 19 million people, making it an integral part of our economy. Rogue websites dedicated to the sale and distribution of counterfeit goods and pirated content are a direct threat to these jobs and to entrepreneurs growing and building legitimate businesses online.
Businesses have lost $135 billion in revenue annually as a result of these rogue sites. Customers have also been harmed by these sites; for example, online pharmacies that don't adhere to U.S. regulations have been reported to cause a rapid increase in prescription drug abuse.
I am a cosponsor of the Protect IP Act which would cut off foreign websites dedicated to counterfeiting and piracy that steal American jobs, hurt the economy, and harm customers. It would allow the Justice Department to file a civil action against those who have registered or own a domain name linked to an infringing website. The bill does not allow the Justice Department to target domain names registered by a U.S. entity.
Innovation is a cornerstone of our nation's economic growth. Proper intellectual property protections and incentives ensure that inventors develop products that benefit consumers. Without such incentives for innovators, we risk falling behind places like China and India.
Again, thank you for contacting me. I look forward to continuing our conversation on Facebook (www.facebook.com/SenatorBlunt) and Twitter (www.twitter.com/RoyBlunt) about the important issues facing Missouri and the country. I also encourage you to visit my website (blunt.senate.gov) to learn more about where I stand on the issues and sign-up for my e-newsletter.
Sincere regards,
Roy Blunt United States Senator
First off, No.. the people in the Gov are not stupid. I work with plenty of genius level gov guys, and there's no doubt that they could come up with some deep and strong protection measures. Honestly, there's probably a warehouse full of such solutions ready to be dusted off (for the right price).
This isn't about that at all, in my opinion. I think it's a "minimum level" legislation, which shows that we "care about the issues' but not enough to encourage or offend everyone else on the planet to the point of retribution. Or at least we hope so.
I could come up with a dozen work-arounds in a week. In the end - as long as we can exchange packets - there's no stopping the exchange of information. That's the whole *point* of the internet, after all.
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
Govts are restricting the internet with salami tactics. In Turkey you can find several levels of censhorship. Some you can circumvent with OpenDNS, others you need proxies/vpn. Then there is the opt-in censhorship of "internet profiles" such as "family internet" or "children's internet".
Every time they up the ante techies realized they could circumvent the effects rather easily, but many many more do not have the know-how.
So the most active knowledgeable users like us develop apathy because we are not really affected, therefore we stay passive, while for the vast majority of users the internet gets more and more restricted. Let's not fall for this complicity strategy.
https://dalgamotor.wordpress.com/ - Elektronik beyinlere ozgurluk asisi (Turkish)
You don't need to copyright all combinations, 12 sets of 3. The first, AKA a tonic, a third and a fifth. Like this; C, E, G. You have just copyrighted a C major chord. How many songs use a C major chord? Copyright all major and minor chords and you own most of western music.
Another day closer to redwood heaven
Yes, but using music theory, one could probably discount many of those that wouldn't be considered "music". You generally don't go back and forth between 4x whole and 1/128 notes repeatedly, and you generally don't go back and forth between the highest and lowest note in the octave repeatedly. You could probably stick to anythign between hole notes and and 1/16 notes, and get the majority of the song. Also, note that as far as copyright goes, changing the pitch of a song to a different key would still be considered the same song, as would playing the song at double speed. There may be a lot of combinations of notes, but not nearly as many would be musically distinct, and also considered music.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
First, why assume they care if it works? They are political whores out to get paid by their corporate media lobbyist Johns. If this legislation is what the Johns want it is what gets them paid. It isn't their problem if it doesn't work. Second.. it probably will work. You just aren't quite understanding the goal. No, it won't block everyone from downloading pirated stuff. It will however make it less 'marketable'. What I mean is the non-geeks won't bother. Remember the congressman twittering that he is bored with the technical explanantions of why SOPA is bad? Unfortunately, that has more in common with the general population than your average tech savy geek. If the vast majority of non-geeks stop pirating (something I suspect is happening anyway due to the current popularity of iTunes and Amazon) then either the remaining pirates would be insignificant and could be ignored or... being a smaller group it would be easier to go after the individuals. In particular, being the geeks they would be the ones writing the p2p apps that they want to shut down. Of course, we know that if the music or movie industries actually ARE suffering it's because their product is not a necessity and the economy sucks right now, their products have been sucking more and more over time and they have failed to adapt to a changing world. That isn't going to stop them from blaming the pirates and going after them first.
Dear Legislators:
I know that you're trying to delete certain web sites from the Internet's "DNS" system, which is the system that contains the names of all the web sites. You might even be able to accomplish this with your SOPA law.
But you should also know the following: Every computer allows another list of web sites to be stored locally on the computer -- it's called the "hosts" file. Every computer uses both the DNS system AND its own "hosts" file to find web sites. If you delete web sites from the DNS system, many people will start using their "hosts" file to get access to the web sites that are no longer in the DNS system.
The "hosts" file makes individual computers completely self-reliant in their ability to find web sites. In fact, you can completely shut down the DNS system, and -- although it would be hard and confusing at first -- eventually everybody would be able to switch over to using their "hosts" file to get access to their web sites. And in the longer-term future, the Internet would then develop a new decentralized system to replace DNS, and, to avoid future shutdowns, this new system would not be accessible to government control -- much like the way peer-to-peer file sharing is not accessible to government control.
This is the way the Internet always works -- if you damage one of its systems (for example DNS), then the Internet will re-configure itself to route around that damage. I guarantee you that any idea that you have for censoring the Internet will cause the Internet to change in a way that works around your attempted censorship. The sooner you understand that, the sooner you can begin to participate in constructive ways to improve the Internet.
I can just about see the headline Fox News would use: "Hackers Develop Ways TO Defeat SOPA Legislation"
No sig for you! Come back one year!
oakgrove why do you stalk hairyfeet and apk all over slashdot like a mentally disturbed stalker? They are not the same person you know!
And you have this on good authority? I'd bet dollars to donuts that apk and hairyfeet are one and the same. They both descend into lengthy incoherent off-topic rants when you hit one of their "hot buttons". They both randomly capitalize and bold words. They both employ very similar grammatical and lexical patterns. I would be very surprised if the two accounts aren't being run by the same person.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Yes, but using music theory, one could probably discount many of those that wouldn't be considered "music". You generally don't go back and forth between 4x whole and 1/128 notes repeatedly, and you generally don't go back and forth between the highest and lowest note in the octave repeatedly. You could probably stick to anythign between hole notes and and 1/16 notes, and get the majority of the song. Also, note that as far as copyright goes, changing the pitch of a song to a different key would still be considered the same song, as would playing the song at double speed. There may be a lot of combinations of notes, but not nearly as many would be musically distinct, and also considered music.
Where is Frank Zappa when we need him?
Perhaps another good solution would be to split the content from the presentation: content posted by users should be uploaded in site A that does not have a DNS entry, and the presentation should come from another site B that has a DNS entry.
The content site would not be block-able, in this way, since it would not have a DNS entry.
The presentation site would be block-able, but if someone removes it from DNS, a new presentation site would become live very shortly, by grabbing a new domain name, and using the content site.
I haven't had time to try this, but there's no reason not to include a DNS host in the hostname, to use as a resolver. An example to explain, imagine "oppressed-group.org" is blocked, but "freeworld.net" hosts a DNS with a list of blocked domain names (just some, doesn't have to be the entire DNS database), you could specify "oppressed-group.org(freeworld.net)" (or give the IP address of the DNS server). It could be chained with as many additional DNS servers as it takes (as in "host(dns2)(dns1)").
In the end, the servers see everything normally, the root DNS and other servers are unchanged, the only change is in the client code that does the lookup.
Alternative syntax could go in the other direction, using "/" or "!" (bring back bang paths!), looking like "freeworld.net!oppressed-group.org".
... encryption.
Imagine a BitTorrent DHT based DNS system. Anybody can add any record they want. There is a convenience layer where human readable DNS names work, but its insecure because anybody can add any record they want.
Real Business(TM) happens when PGP fingerprints or full public keys are used to retrieve the associated records. Each of those records would, of course, be signed with the key in question. Banks and Real Businesses(TM) would have QR code business cards and whatnot with the fingerprints, and people would be likely use bookmarks and home pages they way they were supposed to.
Finally, the smart money would be to actually use the key to encrypt the data/requests flowing towards the host, and have the first (or every) request contain the key the user wants to have used for the encrypted response(s).
Block or deep-packet-inspect that...
It is completely workable, the technology exists, it is "more secure" but, sadly, "more phisable" at the plain-text DNS names level.
Of course, DNS should have never been used as a warrant of identity anyway, it was designed as a phone book and phone numbers change hands, so the first-tier weakness is far exceeded by the value of the rest of the system.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Discounting the elimination of possible "songs" that don't make musical sense, most 90 measure MAFIAA-type songs are not a 90 measure long melody and chord structure, rather two sets of the same segment of a tune repeated three or four times (three or four verses plus three or four choruses), so while the number of combinations is large, for a realistic MAFIAA-style song it's much less than 9^390.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Nah I'm familiar with both and would bet money they aren't same person. Very different writing styles and personality traits.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I've seen hairyfeet and apk go at one another like rabid dogs - not getting along with one another in the past over hosts files versus dns servers.
Easily explainable. Multiple personality disorder, paranoid schizophrenia, teh lulz. Take your pick.
You're just trying to play amateur sleuth and failing, and stalking others in the process like some mentally disturbed maniac stalker would.
Wow, calm your tits, dude. It's just a message board not the UN committee on all things interweb.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Every time Governments (globally & locally) make a BigBiz Brother law to govern how people use technology, they with BigBiz Brother writing the law always royally fyckup and create another zombie-law.
I wish it would happen with all the laws BigBiz Brother author, but that would put poor old BigBiz Brother out of business in any "Open" capitalist market. BigBiz Brother needs the law to (metaphorically) lash every penny out of their customer-hostages and toss citizens in jail or the grave.
Zombie-laws would destroy the BigBiz Brother economy, they what would we have? Zombie-laws tell BigBiz Brother to produce value or die. BigBiz Brother laws (not zombie-laws) in medicine, financials, agriculture, services, communications keep the USA BigBiz Brother economy healthy and functional.
Now don't you want to end zombie-laws, and protect BigBiz Brother?
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Rules of music theory are simple enough to dramatically reduce the number of combinations.
He already did drastically reduce the number of combinations. He only used quarter notes, and only one note at a time. Start making the music more realistic, and there are even more combinations.
Also, a modern music theorist might tell you that all those combinations were valid.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
http://www.paultow.com/2009/06/10/how-to-block-ads-with-a-router/
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I don't have to be a baker to know the bread is stale, guy(s).
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Hmm... this just gave me an idea. VPNs stick out like a sore thumb... but shouldn't it be possible to run a stego VPN over, say, DNS? You could probably even do it pretty well over some AJAX-y persistent connection, where the encryption sits inside all the junk requests to refresh news from a news feed, etc. To make it work even better, have it distributed multipoint, so it looks like your VPN is actually visiting multiple boring sites. This has the added benefit that none of those endpoints has access to your complete datastream either; and using the right encryption scheme, it would be impossible for any single exit point to know anything about the stream other than the next hop destination.
I disagree - HairyFeet's posts are normally relatively well written. You can spot APK's posts just by the layout. I'd bet money that they're not the same person.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
But what if somebody makes a song with the noise?! We'd be losing money!!!1
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
And a plugin to do that isn't an Add-On, because?
Aren't 64th and 128th notes rather a stretch? Even 32nds don't seem likely unless you're talking techno. And seeing as you already mentioned whole notes and "bridging notes together," isn't 4x and 2x notes redundant?
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Here is the text of Mozilla's questions. Nice slap to US Dept. of Homeland Paranoia ICE:
April 19, 2011 email from Mozilla to US Department of Homeland Security SpecialAgent
To help us evaluate the Department of Homeland Security's request to take-down/remove the MAFIAAfire.com add-on from Mozilla's websites, can you please providethe following additional information:
1. Have any courts determined that MAFIAAfire.com is unlawful or illegal inany way? If so, on what basis? (Please provide any relevant rulings)
2. Have any courts determined that the seized domains related to MAFIAAfire.com are unlawful, illegal or liable for infringement in any way? (please provide relevant rulings)
3. Is Mozilla legally obligated to disable the add-on or is this request based on other reasons? If other reasons, can you please specify.
4. Has DHS, or any copyright owners involved in this matter, taken any legal action against MAFIAAfire.com or the seized domains, including DMCA requests?
5. What protections are in place for MAFIAAfire.com or the seized domain owners if eventually a court decides they were not unlawful?
6. Can you please provide copies of any briefs that accompanied the affidavit considered by the court that issued the relevant seizure orders?
7. Can you please provide a copy of the relevant seizure order upon which your request to Mozilla to take down MAFIAAfire.com is based?
8. Please identify exactly what the infringements by the owners of the domains consisted of, with reference to the substantive standards of Section 106 andto any case law establishing that the actions of the seized domain owners constituted civil or criminal copyright infringement.
9. Did any copyright owners furnish affidavits in connection with the domain seizures? Had any copyright owners served DMCA takedown notices on the seizeddomains or MAFIAAfire.com? (if so please provide us with a copy)
10. Has the Government furnished the domain owners with formal notice of the seizures, triggering the time period for a response by the owners? If so, when,and have there been any responses yet by owners?
11. Has the Government communicated its concerns directly with MAFIAAfire.com?If so, what response, if any, did MAFIAAfire.com make?
Posting anon to avoid karma whoring.
Beethoven used 128th notes in Piano Sonata No 9.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
You have any examples from this century? Or better yet, the last 20 years?
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We go back to the good 'ol days of BBS's. You find (Or are given) a phone number (IP Address) of your starting BBS. From there, you meet people or find a 'links list' of other phone numbers (A link list of IP Addresses) that you add to your 'phone book' list.
Cuts out the Search Engines and Cuts out DNS. It'd be just like the good 'ol days before the Internet existed.
So what, if anything, does this actually solve? If an IP address is cut out, then they just cancel their monthly hosting somewhere and find another host elsewhere. Ad Nauseum, how long until virtual hosting companies get blacklisted en masse? Yeah, it means more work for the users by making them keep up their 'phone book' of IP addresses, but we'd essentially end up reverting to a pre-90's style of online communication (Even before AOL).
So you end up with two classes of users. The AOLers who use the Internet as presented and either aren't smart enough to know how or too apathetic to care to change how they use it and allow the government and corporations to dictate what they do online. The alternative for the first group is to go along with it, or go offline. See how Little Susie feels when she's given a choice between doing what we did before the Internet was mainstream and actually having to go outside and meet friends, or comply with th government so she can still chat with her Facebook and Twitter friends.
The other class will be everyone else who recognizes the futility and the frustration of the government attempting to regulate and control something they really have no knowledge of controlling with language, paper, and fear and goes off and does their own thing. Just like the good old days of BBSing.
im in ur coment insutin yur grammar skilz!
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Century, perhaps. I'm not going to bother looking for them. 64th and 128th notes ARE rare but they can be used. I was responding to someone talking about creating a database of all possible song combinations and publishing it to prevent further copyright. I was just attempting to illustrate the sheer number of combinations and not number of good combinations. And I was illustrating just one type of note using one octave for one instrument. I ignored sharps, flats, multiple instruments, lyrics, multiple octaves, and I'm likely missing other things as well. Whether or not 64th and 128th notes are used is really a drop of water in the bucket as far as variables go. You have to figure out if creating all songs can be achieved faster via brute force testing against the rules of what makes a "good" song or only creating all songs that fit the rules. Either way, you'll likely die before you program finishes creating all possible songs.
Double whole notes aren't often listed in their regular notation but rather use a bridge for a series of whole notes and such notation is used for long sustained notes if the sheet music doesn't indicate that the note is to be held as long as possible before the next measure can start.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Not according to 'Welcome Back Kotter" Season 4, Episode 12.
the text of Mozilla's questions
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
Classic! Dude, you totally made my day. I wish I had mod points for you...
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Not to mention... if an RIAA-sponsored song uses that chord over and over and over, like they are wont to do, you can sue them for infringement hundreds of times PER SONG...
Of course, courts actually have sane people interpreting the laws, so they'd probably throw out any suit pressed based on a single chord. Based on 4 bars though... that might work.
The other trick would be that you'd have to weed out all the sets of four bars that are already copyrighted by someone else, and things like the 4 bar blues, which are in the public domain.
The brilliance is that you don't need to copyright the melody line... you could copyright all BASS LINES or even the drum tracks. I think you'd find that most popular music probably runs afoul of other works not owned by the RIAA if you looked outside the melody line.
Actually, this raises an interesting point... while you get lots of lawsuits over re-use of melody lines, in the percussion industry, re-use and adaptation of other people's work is taken for granted. I've never heard of a successful lawsuit over stealing a drum track (although I'm sure at least someone must have succeeded at some point), even though rhythm is just as important to music (and just as much a created work) as melody.
you are wrong. So was your grade 2 teacher that said sentences can't start with 'and'.
I'm not a nerd. Nerds are smart.
In that case, we'll considered society trolled and call it a night.
Moby "1000"?
Or SpeedCore?
I knew it!
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Which would fall under "techno" like I said above, but sure.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Isn't apk an acronym?
Sorry, couldn't resist :)
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
Yep - you could. That's what I meant when I mentioned darknets and private networks. It might work like the Internet, but it won't be anything like it, and lose a very large amount of its benefits.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Apologies for being a troll (since at least one person on slashdot with mod rights thinks "troll" is a synonim to "wrong").
Please don't forget to mod this post as troll too!
If you post as an AC, don't expect me to spend a mod point on you.
You might want to read this story - http://www.spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html. About just what you said.
It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage. - Colonel Henry Walton Jones, Jr., Ph.D.
Bitcoins, duh. (Seriously, I played with bitcoins for a few days when I heard about them the first time, then got bored of them. But I imagine an order like that would be a major win for bitcoins or some other such similar system.)