Having a company be in a position to dictate your access to data you *bought* fair and square is DRM no matter how you slice it. Being purposefully blocked by a willful access denial is just as much a manifestation of DRM as if the auth server went offline.
People are money grubbing greedy bastards no matter if they are system-gaming individuals, corporate fat cats, or double-speaking politicians.
Nobody will admit it though, because we're a proud species that thinks it's our god given right to screw each other, so anyone who has the balls to call us out on it has hell to pay for daring to challenge the status quo.
Twisted Tax Tables Touting Terrible Traps is just one of many manifestations of this. See also AIG.
Greed is everywhere, not just in corporate board rooms. It's high time the human race looked itself in the mirror and stopped being so selfish. Whatever happened to the common good?
And since when did self-interest get a blank check to ruin cooperation?
Which would still give the police probable cause unless they had reason to doubt the credibility when they accepted the statement. Probable cause doesn't require a truthful witness, it requires a witness that is credible...which may include a witness that is willing to face jeopardy for a perjury charge should he be caught lying.
Which should be the case...the cops had better not have taken a statement unless there was some risk for any would-be fibbers.
Sworn statement by 1 witness = probable cause (even if the witness is later caught lying). Sworn statements by 2 witnesses = beyond a reasonable doubt (good enough for treason at least).
There's a reason that making a false complaint is often a criminal offense in many cases, and if you falsely certify something UNDER PENALTY OF PERJURY, then you have by definition committed perjury, simple as that.
That doesn't negate probable cause unless the police have a priori knowledge that they're being bullshitted. But bullshitting the cops just to get someone else in trouble has its own risks, especially if you're caught.
But since it's not the government's fault if they get hoodwinked by a witness who's motives are not suspect at the time the statement is taken, probable cause still stands.
I think that if the feds are going to be doing bailouts by buying stock, then the government should start exercising its voting rights in addition to collecting dividends.
I mean, look at Amtrak...someone has to vote, so if the shares are in the governmental balance sheet, someone in government has to do the voting.
Which is why we need to give them more than just a "sorry guys" to the people not found guilty (notice what I did here...maintain a presumption of innocence).
Personally, I think that several of them will have procedural grounds for dismissal. Being couped up in gitmo for years on end is a PROFOUND violation of speedy trial rights.
Habeas Corpus all the way, and cut them loose if the feds can't produce so much as one shred of evidence to support even probable cause, let alone beyond a reasonable doubt.
National Security is bullshit, because "classified" as an excuse only has weight as a federal statute, and the constitution outranks it.
That's right! When constitutional rights are involved, national security takes a back seat!
And btw, unless we have a land of the free, then this country isn't even worth protecting, because our founding fathers and patriot freedom fighters of old will have shed their precious blood for naught.
The problem is that most likely at least a few gitmo prisoners are indeed terrorists.
A massive "habeas corpus" flood into the federal court system would be a much better first step. With a strict deadline such that any prisoner, especially those who ask for it, that don't get it, automatically goes free.
Some of them may very well have become hell-bent on revenge from being couped up for so long...and who knows what recruiting al-qaeda has managed to pull off al-capone style in Gitmo?
A blind jailbreak is a bad idea.
It's good publicity in the short term, but some of them will be guilty and if any terrorist attacks then follow in the US, it will bite obama in the ass.
If it was evidence of a criminal action, it should have been turned into the police as evidence, not sold to the MPAA as a juicy tidbit.
The profit of selling it to the MPAA should be confiscated as proceeds of crime.
I seriously doubt the MPAA wasn't somehow complicit in this "breach". If they knew it was stolen, and accepted it anyway, then, apart from possible guilt for receiving stolen property, they should also be deemed to have unclean hands, and be estopped from using the ill-gotten evidence to support a lawsuit.
When both parties to a case act illegally, a judge will typically tell them both they're SOL.
I think the biggest problem in dealing with virtual assets is to ignore the large swath of law, both civil and criminal, that deals with RL property.
And often times, there are already parallels, thusly:
RL:MMO::...
Possession of a controlled substance:Having duped/bugged/RMT purchased goods busted for drug dealing:banned for duping/exploiting busted for fraud:banned for scamming busted for burglary/robbery:banned for hacking busted for terrorism:banned and beyond for server hacking/DoS busted for money laundering:banned for aiding and abetting (example: ISK laundering during the POS exploit in EVE) busted for X:banned for Y
I think the first thing that needs to happen before RMT becomes a reality is to first establish a ruthless attitude towards virtual crime. Let suspensions and bans play the cyber version of jail and the needle & gurney.
You cannot have cyber-commerce without first laying a foundation of cyber-law and cyber-order to deal with cyber-crime.
And that's just the criminal side.
What about civil tort and contract law?
Would you ever need to file a cyber-lawsuit if a cyber-contractor gives you the cyber-shaft? Should you be able to?
What exactly is a cyber-contract anyway?
What about cyber-torts and cyber-negligence?
And of course, there's going to be cyber-taxes if RL governments have their way.
And also, there's rl-liability if a company doesn't properly protect cyber-assets from damage. Should crashes be excluded as an "Act of cyber-God"? Can you buy cyber-insurance to protect yourself from cyber-accidents?
My cyber-head is cyber-spinning.
One thing I can be sure of...
Unless the courts are seriously high on something, they aren't going to let a company simultaneously place real value on in-game assets and simultaneously retain the right to unilaterally "in our sole and final discretion" change things at a whim.
Giving cyber-assets RL value will entail RL consequences when companies play cyber-god
Probably 'twas 10 percent of the membership (i.e. paid accounts, versus free ones) that were dumped.
I see advanced payments as a sort of bond. If you get caught breaking the rules, you get banned and your money goes bye bye.
Maybe this is why a bigger bite got taken out of free players than paid players...perhaps the paid players were better behaved because they had more to lose if they were caught cheating than simple pride...the cold hard $$$$ they prepaid.
In real life, you can also REVOKE your invitation by
1) telling your guest they are no longer welcome 2) order them to leave, and tell them they are not to return 3) have the police escort them away and give them a trespass warning. 4) have them arrested if they refuse to leave, or return in spite of an official trespass warning 5) Watch them get clapped in irons if they come back again. 6) Repeat step 5 as needed
With spam, it's more like your guest
1) Found your hide-a-key (harvested your address, possibly by decrypting an image) 2) Barged in through an unlocked door (that they unlocked thmselves) 3) Increasingly, disable your security system (aka getting past your filters) 4) Threw a messy party 5) (the possible worst part) Bribed the police so they don't get escorted away (aka signed a pink contract) 6) Has an extensive collection of disguises that protects them from being dinged twice in the same face (botnets and address forgeries) 7) Possibly got tipped off to your address through the slip of the tongue of one of your buddies through the grapevine (sleazy companies that leak your address or sell it)
So anyone who calls spam the natural result of negligence on the part of the account holder is either high and doesn't have a clue what's going on, or is a woefully apathetic approver of the "survival of the fittest" arms race between spammers, providers, and subscribers.
Except that in the case of XBL they call that getting banned by MS.
More to the point, you shouldn't give a player the same type of consequence that he would get if he were caught hacking a server or using a cheaterbox to play with.
Being effectively punished as a cheater just because you died is unfair.
Particularly if the death surprises you by being permanent, and it will be a very ugly surprise indeed if it's not disclosed adequately BEFORE you plunk down a non-refundable wad of cash to buy the game. Players may even decide NOT to play a permadeath game that requires a new copy to play again.
"When you get a game over you lose, no replays no...restaaarts..." -- Spy Kids 3
I'm mighty glad you're around. Without you, our country would be viciously attacked and us civilian folks would be helpless. God bless you!
To everyone:
I personally would like to see the civilian population get a glimpse of what our soldiers have to deal with 24/7 on the front lines. If nothing else, it would give them respect for what really is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. In fact, I can't think of anything worse, except maybe nuke reactor techs and perhaps astronauts in space. Personally I think it's deplorable for military funerals to be rudely disrupted by angry mobs that should be directing their anger at the feds who sent the troops to begin with.
Companies who want to make money off of it would do well to show proper respect for what their products represent. To anyone designing such a game, I would at least recommend hiring military folks on as consultants. You'll do a much better job at recreating a war in a game if you have first hand testimony of what it's actually like on the front lines.
Anyone read the Big Friendly Giant? Particularly the part where a bunch of dreams got mixed together for the queen, but it turned out to be a nightmare dream? That is the sort of thing I'm talking about.
Hopefully after he gets a very PAINFUL slap on the wrist for computer trespass.
I really would like the feds/cops to nail him, even if he just gets a stern warning of some sort.
He needs arrested and charged. What he did was a crime, and he needs to be taught to back off of people's computers, preferably before he turns into a legal adult and opens himself up to BIG trouble.
You shouldn't be using BT unless you have an alternative.
If you can switch, consider doing so and let market forces punish BT.
If BT is entrenched, then I pity you, and encourage you to use evasive maneuvers, preferably without breaking TOS.
Either way, you may wish to make it a political issue and complain loudly to whatever you britons have for our yankee FTC or FCC. I'd guess "ministry of communication" but I'm just a yankee.
Slashdot Mirror
Having a company be in a position to dictate your access to data you *bought* fair and square is DRM no matter how you slice it. Being purposefully blocked by a willful access denial is just as much a manifestation of DRM as if the auth server went offline.
Unless you consider TPM to be an operating system implemented in hardware...
But...
"anyone who trades X for security deserves neither, and shall lose both".
Education is the only way to resolve this, really. But find me a user who is patient enough not to veto such an education with his wallet.
The company that caters to the user's whims the best wins, and to hell with wisdom with a slow but steady ROI.
People are money grubbing greedy bastards no matter if they are system-gaming individuals, corporate fat cats, or double-speaking politicians.
Nobody will admit it though, because we're a proud species that thinks it's our god given right to screw each other, so anyone who has the balls to call us out on it has hell to pay for daring to challenge the status quo.
Twisted Tax Tables Touting Terrible Traps is just one of many manifestations of this. See also AIG.
Greed is everywhere, not just in corporate board rooms. It's high time the human race looked itself in the mirror and stopped being so selfish. Whatever happened to the common good?
And since when did self-interest get a blank check to ruin cooperation?
Any negative interactions?
I hope that HTTPS can cache like HTTP does.
Running end-to-end encryption would certainly prevent proxies from stashing away frequently accessed objects.
'nuff said.
If there's strict liability, failure is not an option.
There are quite a few cases in law, even criminal, where due diligence or even "utmost care" is not a defense.
Whether I think it's fair to hold someone accountable for stuff entirely beyond their control is another story,
Which would still give the police probable cause unless they had reason to doubt the credibility when they accepted the statement. Probable cause doesn't require a truthful witness, it requires a witness that is credible...which may include a witness that is willing to face jeopardy for a perjury charge should he be caught lying.
Which should be the case...the cops had better not have taken a statement unless there was some risk for any would-be fibbers.
Sworn statement by 1 witness = probable cause (even if the witness is later caught lying).
Sworn statements by 2 witnesses = beyond a reasonable doubt (good enough for treason at least).
There's a reason that making a false complaint is often a criminal offense in many cases, and if you falsely certify something UNDER PENALTY OF PERJURY, then you have by definition committed perjury, simple as that.
That doesn't negate probable cause unless the police have a priori knowledge that they're being bullshitted. But bullshitting the cops just to get someone else in trouble has its own risks, especially if you're caught.
But since it's not the government's fault if they get hoodwinked by a witness who's motives are not suspect at the time the statement is taken, probable cause still stands.
I think that if the feds are going to be doing bailouts by buying stock, then the government should start exercising its voting rights in addition to collecting dividends.
I mean, look at Amtrak...someone has to vote, so if the shares are in the governmental balance sheet, someone in government has to do the voting.
Which is why we need to give them more than just a "sorry guys" to the people not found guilty (notice what I did here...maintain a presumption of innocence).
Personally, I think that several of them will have procedural grounds for dismissal. Being couped up in gitmo for years on end is a PROFOUND violation of speedy trial rights.
Habeas Corpus all the way, and cut them loose if the feds can't produce so much as one shred of evidence to support even probable cause, let alone beyond a reasonable doubt.
National Security is bullshit, because "classified" as an excuse only has weight as a federal statute, and the constitution outranks it.
That's right! When constitutional rights are involved, national security takes a back seat!
And btw, unless we have a land of the free, then this country isn't even worth protecting, because our founding fathers and patriot freedom fighters of old will have shed their precious blood for naught.
Hmph...PATRIOT act indeed!
The problem is that most likely at least a few gitmo prisoners are indeed terrorists.
A massive "habeas corpus" flood into the federal court system would be a much better first step. With a strict deadline such that any prisoner, especially those who ask for it, that don't get it, automatically goes free.
Some of them may very well have become hell-bent on revenge from being couped up for so long...and who knows what recruiting al-qaeda has managed to pull off al-capone style in Gitmo?
A blind jailbreak is a bad idea.
It's good publicity in the short term, but some of them will be guilty and if any terrorist attacks then follow in the US, it will bite obama in the ass.
If it was evidence of a criminal action, it should have been turned into the police as evidence, not sold to the MPAA as a juicy tidbit.
The profit of selling it to the MPAA should be confiscated as proceeds of crime.
I seriously doubt the MPAA wasn't somehow complicit in this "breach". If they knew it was stolen, and accepted it anyway, then, apart from possible guilt for receiving stolen property, they should also be deemed to have unclean hands, and be estopped from using the ill-gotten evidence to support a lawsuit.
When both parties to a case act illegally, a judge will typically tell them both they're SOL.
Demand for a gold seller's business drives up incentives for gold sellers to hack accounts.
To a gold seller, hackable accounts are a resource they are happy to exploit to get gold to sell.
So, gold buyer -> gold seller -> hack account.
My point was that spammers don't honor invite revokes.
You "unsubscribe", all you get is more spam. You make your email address valuable by confirming that it's live.
Also bear in mind that spammers themselves quite often operate outside the bounds of the law.
So they should be punished, often regardless of whether or not we "invite" them or not.
Indeed.
I think the biggest problem in dealing with virtual assets is to ignore the large swath of law, both civil and criminal, that deals with RL property.
And often times, there are already parallels, thusly:
RL:MMO:: ...
Possession of a controlled substance:Having duped/bugged/RMT purchased goods
busted for drug dealing:banned for duping/exploiting
busted for fraud:banned for scamming
busted for burglary/robbery:banned for hacking
busted for terrorism:banned and beyond for server hacking/DoS
busted for money laundering:banned for aiding and abetting (example: ISK laundering during the POS exploit in EVE)
busted for X:banned for Y
I think the first thing that needs to happen before RMT becomes a reality is to first establish a ruthless attitude towards virtual crime. Let suspensions and bans play the cyber version of jail and the needle & gurney.
You cannot have cyber-commerce without first laying a foundation of cyber-law and cyber-order to deal with cyber-crime.
And that's just the criminal side.
What about civil tort and contract law?
Would you ever need to file a cyber-lawsuit if a cyber-contractor gives you the cyber-shaft? Should you be able to?
What exactly is a cyber-contract anyway?
What about cyber-torts and cyber-negligence?
And of course, there's going to be cyber-taxes if RL governments have their way.
And also, there's rl-liability if a company doesn't properly protect cyber-assets from damage. Should crashes be excluded as an "Act of cyber-God"? Can you buy cyber-insurance to protect yourself from cyber-accidents?
My cyber-head is cyber-spinning.
One thing I can be sure of...
Unless the courts are seriously high on something, they aren't going to let a company simultaneously place real value on in-game assets and simultaneously retain the right to unilaterally "in our sole and final discretion" change things at a whim.
Giving cyber-assets RL value will entail RL consequences when companies play cyber-god
Probably 'twas 10 percent of the membership (i.e. paid accounts, versus free ones) that were dumped.
I see advanced payments as a sort of bond. If you get caught breaking the rules, you get banned and your money goes bye bye.
Maybe this is why a bigger bite got taken out of free players than paid players...perhaps the paid players were better behaved because they had more to lose if they were caught cheating than simple pride...the cold hard $$$$ they prepaid.
It's not quite an invitation...
In real life, you can also REVOKE your invitation by
1) telling your guest they are no longer welcome
2) order them to leave, and tell them they are not to return
3) have the police escort them away and give them a trespass warning.
4) have them arrested if they refuse to leave, or return in spite of an official trespass warning
5) Watch them get clapped in irons if they come back again.
6) Repeat step 5 as needed
With spam, it's more like your guest
1) Found your hide-a-key (harvested your address, possibly by decrypting an image)
2) Barged in through an unlocked door (that they unlocked thmselves)
3) Increasingly, disable your security system (aka getting past your filters)
4) Threw a messy party
5) (the possible worst part) Bribed the police so they don't get escorted away (aka signed a pink contract)
6) Has an extensive collection of disguises that protects them from being dinged twice in the same face (botnets and address forgeries)
7) Possibly got tipped off to your address through the slip of the tongue of one of your buddies through the grapevine (sleazy companies that leak your address or sell it)
So anyone who calls spam the natural result of negligence on the part of the account holder is either high and doesn't have a clue what's going on, or is a woefully apathetic approver of the "survival of the fittest" arms race between spammers, providers, and subscribers.
Except that in the case of XBL they call that getting banned by MS.
More to the point, you shouldn't give a player the same type of consequence that he would get if he were caught hacking a server or using a cheaterbox to play with.
Being effectively punished as a cheater just because you died is unfair.
Particularly if the death surprises you by being permanent, and it will be a very ugly surprise indeed if it's not disclosed adequately BEFORE you plunk down a non-refundable wad of cash to buy the game. Players may even decide NOT to play a permadeath game that requires a new copy to play again.
"When you get a game over you lose, no replays no...restaaarts..." -- Spy Kids 3
That's still hacking.
Exploiters who take advantage of loopholes for their own gain should be punished.
Had this student simply reported the incident to twitter, I'd think differently.
Using it to promote his own site proves bad faith.
Are you a veteran?
To all veterans who read /.:
I'm mighty glad you're around. Without you, our country would be viciously attacked and us civilian folks would be helpless. God bless you!
To everyone:
I personally would like to see the civilian population get a glimpse of what our soldiers have to deal with 24/7 on the front lines. If nothing else, it would give them respect for what really is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. In fact, I can't think of anything worse, except maybe nuke reactor techs and perhaps astronauts in space. Personally I think it's deplorable for military funerals to be rudely disrupted by angry mobs that should be directing their anger at the feds who sent the troops to begin with.
Companies who want to make money off of it would do well to show proper respect for what their products represent. To anyone designing such a game, I would at least recommend hiring military folks on as consultants. You'll do a much better job at recreating a war in a game if you have first hand testimony of what it's actually like on the front lines.
Anyone read the Big Friendly Giant? Particularly the part where a bunch of dreams got mixed together for the queen, but it turned out to be a nightmare dream? That is the sort of thing I'm talking about.
Hopefully after he gets a very PAINFUL slap on the wrist for computer trespass.
I really would like the feds/cops to nail him, even if he just gets a stern warning of some sort.
He needs arrested and charged. What he did was a crime, and he needs to be taught to back off of people's computers, preferably before he turns into a legal adult and opens himself up to BIG trouble.
nt
You shouldn't be using BT unless you have an alternative.
If you can switch, consider doing so and let market forces punish BT.
If BT is entrenched, then I pity you, and encourage you to use evasive maneuvers, preferably without breaking TOS.
Either way, you may wish to make it a political issue and complain loudly to whatever you britons have for our yankee FTC or FCC. I'd guess "ministry of communication" but I'm just a yankee.
Unfortunately some signup forms get wise and consider + to be an invalid character in an email address.
I wonder if it's
1. Overzealous syntax checking, or
2. Shenanigans
They already do, it's called downblende
I blame politics.
Considering what AIG just pulled, the RIAA following suit probably isn't too far behind.
Also, remember that aide that effectively ordered the DOJ not to investigate him?