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Microsoft, Google, Apple Could Be Requested To Actively Block Pirated Downloads, Says Report (torrentfreak.com)
Popular operating systems by Microsoft, Apple, and Google could possibly soon nuke torrents downloaded (PDF, non-English language) from The Pirate Bay and other websites that offer copyright infringing content, warns a report published by Black Market Watch and the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime. The report adds that the aforementioned companies are in an ideal position to deter piracy, and could be requested by the authority to put a system in place to block pirated content on the operating system level. Via a TorrentFreak report: "Other players that possess the potential ability to limit piracy are the companies that own the major operating systems which control computers and mobile devices such as Apple, Google and Microsoft," one of the main conclusions reads. "The producers of operating systems should be encouraged, or regulated, for example, to block downloads of copyright infringing material," the report adds. The report references last year's Windows 10 controversy, noting that these concerns were great enough for some torrent sites to block users with the new operating system. While Sweden doesn't have enough influence to make an impact on these global software manufacturers, applying pressure through the international community and trade groups may have some effect.
This will produce a giant boost of Linux usage on the desktop.
See you later guys...
Android and Linux for me, thanks!
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Let's see.
There's Linux, BSD, Windows XP, Windows Vista as backup OSes.
No problem.
God, I would love that.
That's a terrible idea. It sounds like a proposal made by someone who doesn't understand how computers work.
Enforcing this would be a nightmare. If they did a cost/benefit analysis of this, I suspect the cost of implementation & maintenance would far outstrip the earnings they hope to "protect".
Because the obvious response of these OS providers, if forced to do it, will be shoving even more DRM (and worse, hardware-assisted DRM) down our throats.
That's basically the main way they have to force that a "non approved/digitally signed" program or OS is simply unable to run.
That and ratting you out to the NSA, if you are doing something the OS thinks may be "Wrongcomputing".
Nothing makes me feel safer than knowing some invisible party on the other side of the Atlantic has access to nuking any and all files on my computer whenever he wants.
I'm sure companies will love to know that their trade secrets can be deleted without notice by a low-level grunt taking a bribe from a competitor.
When the fucking hell did my computer stop being MY computer?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
1. people hate blue-ray and DVD because its nearly 20 minutes of unstoppable auto-play adverts for new titles or tie-in marketing.
2. people hate being gouged for old titles they cant access anymore in the name of exploiting established nostalgia. I can pay $70 for a used copy of command and conquer, or i can just fucking download it.
3. people loathe the theatre experience of 20 minute captive audience adverts, exorbitant ticket prices, and concession gouging.
unless and until these issues are resolved, we will continue to sink time and formidable effort into the process of generating and distributing torrents. theres no legislation you can pass that will keep me from getting a copy of the avengers that doesnt waste my time while the version that tries to sell me a new car stays on the shelf.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Every Data transaction has to be traceable back to a certificate authority. Every program can be deauthorized from a central authority.
Yea, but I can look at the source code for android... Well Most of it anyway... Try that with IOS or Windows!
Besides, generally the issues with Google and Android are not the OS, but the applications that get loaded on the OS..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
In these companies' position, I'd respond "Sure, we'll provide a way to block infringing content. You'll merely have to present a judgment from a court of competent jurisdiction stating that that content has been found to be infringing. We aren't a court, we're not going to hear cases and make rulings like one.". When the whines start, I'd go "Oh, you want it blocked because you allege it's infringing? OK, we can do that. We'll block any content that anyone alleges infringes on their copyrights until presented with a court ruling saying it isn't infringing. But again we aren't a court, we will not get into the business of hearing cases and making rulings on whether the evidence supports the allegation or not.".
Paul Ryan needs to fund his retirement.
The Right to Read
No, the OS makers should not be regulated to keep your struggling business model alive.
You fought to make copyright insanely long. Now its getting harder to put out new things no one has seen before and will pay money to see.
You fight to keep your creations artificially restricted by region in our connected world. So people share it to get around that.
You fight to keep people from sharing culture. That's the very essence of culture, a shared social existence.
You fight to make money off those who create, and screw them over. They are leaving you in droves.
You lie, cheat and steal and when someone does it to you, you whine and beg and bribe to get them back. You act as if you are the only ones with rights here. Well you are not. We have rights as well and we're sick of your corrupting our governments to steal them from us.
We're going to share content. you cannot stop it. Add more DRM and we'll simply break it. Pass laws to regulate makers of operating systems and they'll move while we choose another one or make it ourselves. Take down a website, another will always spring up to replace it. Give us shit options that cost more than physical ones and we'll continue to ignore them in favor of sharing. We are not pirates. We are humans. We are not wallets. We are humans. Humanity survived because of sharing. You deny humanity itself when you try to stop sharing. You declare yourselves to be monsters that must be fed, creatures who think they are better than we and should be obeyed.
We do not like those would call themselves our masters. Especially not when they prove to have such a weak grasp of reality. You keep spending your money and efforts trying to stop sharing. We'll keep finding new ways to share until you run out of money, out of influence, out of ears to listen to you and corrupt our laws. And then, when you have passed from existence, we'll figure out better ways to share more freely, to build upon each others creativity, and make truly great things again.
captcha: overtake
...put a system in place to block pirated content on the operating system level. ...
Given the quality assurance failures of major OS providers recently, this new plan will only be a disaster. But those proposing it don't care about false positives, and they have lawyers to protect themselves from the effects of false positives.
.
[aside: this coming weekend I plan to convert the second of my three notebooks from Windows to Linux, due to the Windows 10 update malware tactic. If the plan to delete files on my systems goes through, the conversion of the remainder of my Windows PCs will only be accelerated.]
Microsoft blocks downloads of Linux and FOSS as 'malicious software'
Don't tell me it won't happen because IT WILL.
Censorship by the government of Free Speech by deeming 'unwanted' material to be 'copyright infringing'
Don't tell me THAT won't happen, either.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
If you are going to come up with such a crazy idea, why not talk to the router manufacturers first? It seems that they are in a better position to block websites.
By what authority, precisely? Who - specifically - has the standing to write anything more compelling than a polite request to Microsoft, Apple and Google asking them to do this?
Why should we care about the views of a couple of antipiracy lobbying NGO?
How does the operating system tell whether or not a torrent contains copyrighted material? How does it now whether or not you have paid the license fee for an MP3? How about if I check out a CD or DVD from the library and rip it using 3rd party software, how does Windows tell I haven't paid for it?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Uber-nerds commonly use servers, and torrents are becoming less popular with average joes, but most torrent users do download directly to their PC and hardly understand the concept of a server.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
An open Internet and general purpose computers give peasants too much power and must be quashed at all costs.
this was some random discussion but you know slashdot check nothing its fact. the same shit was spred around with xp vista 7 8 etc.
That's the beauty of open source software. It doesn't matter who made it, because the creator of the software doesn't get to control it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software
Do many people still use .torrent files? Everything is pretty much magnet these days and you can't delete those. And how would they implement removing downloaded .torrent files when there are plenty of legit torrents out there? You can't just nuke *.torrent without catching the legit ones too. This sounds like a request by someone who doesn't understand technology.
Major players COULD do this, as in it's technically possible. There is no reason to think it's going to happen. This is for profit fear.
What's the difference between a legitimate packet and an illegitimate one? How will MS', Apple's, and Google's operating systems distinguish between them in order to decide which to reject and which to accept? This sounds like one of those stupid, ill-informed, half-cock ideas like banning encryption.
I already have a plan in place...
I'm going to just XOR all my data streams with a repeated 0x46 0x75 0x63 0x6b 0x20 0x4f 0x66 0x66.
If they figure it out, they're liable for violating the DMCA rules on anticircumvention...
So this is their solution to VPNs? As blocking the trackers doesn't work effectively, how do they plan to bock the magnets?
Seriously if they ever get this concept to work; it will only create a vacuum that will be filled quickly but another hybrid solution for P2P downloading very quickly.
if its on windows and decently good at checking torrents by traffic signature, either A) people will just not install the update, or B) a new file sharing protocol will become popular. if its no good at checking torrents via traffic, could you just rename the file to something else and use it that way?
It's already extremely scary that the US and Chinese governments have inserted backdoors into critical components and/or system designs. We need to gain a firm hold on the devices in our possession and right now the only way that's going to happen is if we fund the modular computer project:
https://www.crowdsupply.com/eo...
Otherwise it's going to be possible to order companies to do things in the governments interests, in the interests of corporate entities, and in the disinterest of us users. We're already victims of Microsoft, Google, Apple and the government. If we want to begin to undo some of these issues we need to focus on the foundational layers and get sources released for CPUs, keyboard/LCD controllers, wireless chips, and similar. The above project will enable these things by bring down the cost of design and reduce the high initial investment to bring new devices to market that put put the user in control.
Why is this surprising anyone? Have any of you tried to go to the PirateBay or savedeo.com with Chrome? It won't let you...it pretends it can't find the site. I used Chrome when it first came out...it was fast and the UI was nice. But since then, Chrome has slowed down a lot, and I've gone back to firefox which is basically a kludgy mess, but at least it doesn't censor my access.
I don't have any problems with "http://thepiratebay.se.com/" on Chrome, Firefox, QupZilla or Konqueror. Maybe it's the operating system you are running those browsers on because all of them run perfectly under Fedora 24 or even Linux Mint 18.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
So, if I want to download Linux ISOs, I should use Linux?
Requiem for the American Dream
Similar approaches are already common. Some dude uploads some digital contraband in an encrypted archive with an innocuous name, and the website where it is advertised also has a line that says something like "pw: kissmyass".
That is usually sufficient to evade automated filtering, as it requires human intelligence to understand the advertisement and issue a takedown notice. For actual prosecution, someone would have to download the archive, decrypt it with the password and check the contents. At least in a constitutional state.
C - the footgun of programming languages
There is no way you could convince every hardware and software company to lock down every computing device to not run anything that isn't approved by governments and big corporations. Outlawing general purpose computers (i.e. things capable of running "unapproved" software) will never be possible either (at least not in any country that isn't a strict dictatorship like North Korea).
Nor could you modify the networking layer of things like Windows to be able to detect anything piracy related (or even just Torrent traffic) since so much of it is encrypted (even ISPs with expensive dedicated super-fast deep packet inspection gear haven't been able to detect all the different ways of sending encrypted BitTorrent traffic out there,)
Because nobody except Google can type make && make install. Right.
Well, only Google can do that on the source they actually do that on.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
"a report published by Black Market Watch and the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime."
Seems legit and unbiased to me...
My dad constantly asks me if he should get windows 10 (until I installed gwx control panel).
I tried to explain to him why it is a very bad thing, and this (win10) is "just the tip".
There's more to come and you won't be able to stop it. Just fight it as long as you can.
eyes glaze over...
A far superior genius and far superior crackpot said it much better...:
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy...
He doesn't sound quite as crazy as he did a year ago, does he?
Also, IIRC Corey Doctorow has already predicted this, too. I think it was a short story about copyright--that *everything* is copyrighted before it's written (your new work will always be sufficiently similar to $copyrighted_work), so no new works can be created. Just can't find it right now...
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
As much as I hate to be in the same camp of people who want to pirate snob porn from HBO, the US has started regulating political views held by individuals and companies. Allowing the political police to further decide what flies and doesn't is just another step toward the Orwellian state we are heading toward.
In other words, George Orwell's "Telescreens" in 1984.... Ole Georgy Porgy was right on the money, just 32 years early.....
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
Umm... I just went to Piratebay via Chrome... No problem, easy-peasy... Of course, I should clarify that I'm on Linux, not "Windows NSA Edition"....
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
There is software out there that blocks torrents and can even tell if you have a torrent client installed and restrict your access until you remove the torrent client. ... I discovered this on a business trip where the place I was renting had such software on their "free wifi" rendering their free wifi only fit for checking email. When I complained; I was told to go to the local Burger King for wifi if I wanted access to illicit activities.
The thing is; the distributed push of Microsoft Updates is interpreted as a "torrent". And many game companies, like Blizzard, use torrents to rapidly distribute patches.
The result is that if you are using a network that has one of these "torrent suppressors" active; you can't get Microsoft updates and you can't play real time online games.
I think that if the Tor Browser and Onion Router were offered by a publicly traded company it would be time to buy stock.
NRRPT/RCT
I guess the EU should look into that then, as due to monopoly position those companies have, they should not be allowed to just delete content from anyones computer.. I even think it is illegal in a lot of countries to delete stuff without the consent of the user.. But if it all goes through, I guess Linux will start to get even more popular..
I also don't understand on who's authority they can do this for every country.. they can't..
That will allow you to store the files, download, and share them, but you have the problem that to actually watch them, you're going decrypt them at some point.
Though maybe in a few years after secure boot is mandatory, and unauthorized OSes are banned from connecting to the internet, we'll be forced to download our media so encrypted, then sneaker-net it over to our old computers to decrypt and watch them.
I'm fairly certain that while Microsoft would love to make all the pirates pay for Windows, they're too scared that if they push too hard the pirates will instead switch to Linux. At the end of the day, Microsoft would much rather have people run pirated Windows than Linux.