I work with children professionally, and the measures we have to go through are panic-inducing. The fact that I choose to work in a school automatically makes me suspicious. We have rules like 'always walk with your hands at chest height, so they cannot accidentially brush a pupil inappropriatly in a corridoor' and 'never stand next to a seated female pupil, lest she believe you are trying to look at her breasts.' No teacher would ever dare to actually be on friendly terms with a pupil, it's just too dangerous. We've even had one dinner lady charged with child grooming for giving a free biscuit.
That's probably why the search of the home. A fishing trip. The prosecutor knew the case was weak, and just wanted to see if there was something, anything, he could use to either strengthen it or force a plea.
The definition of child pornography has been widened several times, always with those responsible claiming it was to close a 'loophole.' It's now reached the point where it can include drawn artwork, completly fictional stories and even (in Australia, anyway) rule 34 joke art of the Simpsons.
Naturally, if you dare to argue that this definition creep is a danger, you will be accused of supporting child rape.
DVD worked the same way - consumer writers are incapable of writing a CSS key block, so even if you do a bit-for-bit read you can't write it back to another disc. Eventually it was broken in an easier manner: Someone figured out how to decrypt CSS, thus rendering the key block unneeded.
Not trivial. It's not something an enthusiast can knock out in their home workshop. But any one of the dodgy chinese electronics factories could do it with ease. I expect you'll be able to buy them imported, but it'll be grey market, as US or European distributors would fear legal action.
Pirate conventions place an HD 720p movie at 4.4GB. Not because this is espicially optimal, but because it's convenient. It's the size of a DVD-R. One movie rip, one DVD-R.
Some pirates choose to put extra effort into compression and release smaller files, while some films due to exceptional length or visual demands need a larger file. But most are 4.4GB. Pirates tend to think in terms of filesize rather than bitrate, as filesize is what matters when distributing.
Apple need their products to be a little too expensive. It's a branding thing. Their products are seen as premium - if they were sold cheap, people wouldn't see them as special and must-have. It's the same basic model as seen in designer clothing: If it wasn't expensive, people wouldn't have any reason to buy it.
It could have some uses. Rare, but plausible. I'm thinking more organised crime than hacking, though - "We caught a drug dealer, and he probably arranged purchase by email. Find out who." That, and the usefulness to government of "Give us every email you have addressed to wikileaks and bearing an attachment, so we can see who sent them those documents."
Smart phones? The old dumb phones left a record too. They still had to tell the network where they were in order for it to route the incoming call notification to the correct cell. If you want a non-trackable mobile, you have to go back to the pager days.
Ubiquidous encryption would be a good start. Sure, it's breakable without a very good authentication system, and governments can always get the root CAs to issue something - but it takes time, effort and substantial hardware. It'd make it impossible to mass-trawl tens of thousands of users looking for dirt.
It's not hardware. The killswitch consists of someone in the government calling every major ISP and politely hinting that they really should pull out all those cables and turn off the routers, otherwise the secret police would be more than happy to kick the doors down and do it for them.
"I doubt that many people would be willing to risk it."
Considering that success grants you not just immortality, but power so vast you may take on the title of God? The problem wouldn't be finding volunteers, it'd be screening to keep the meglomaniacs out.
Blame where blame is due. You can blame the Catholics for it - they were preaching that sexual pleasure was inherently sinful and evil long before the Puritans were around. The Puritans just turned it up to eleven, and they wern't the only Protestant grouping to do so.
Aside from the attention-grabbing for the audience, it goes a long way to show his disassociation from humanity. He doesn't wear clothing because he doesn't need to, and no longer cares for petty human taboos. It's not that he is deliberatly flouting social convention - he just doesn't care any more. Total indifference.
He blew up American cities too. That's a quite clear proof that he has gone rogue and is no longer under their control.
The biggest problem I see is that M can be duplicated. He was a lab accident. Ozy managed to duplicate the equipment himself, in order to buy a few seconds. Every government in the world would be trying to duplicate the accident, and sooner or later they will succeed - and not with just one scientist, but with the most patriotic and loyal soldiers in their army. And lots of them.
It could run an offload, though. Distributed cache. If your neighbour or your neighbour has what you want, you can get it from him. If not, ask nodes you can reach via the internet. Freenet does something like that, though with anti-tracking measures that will make all but the most paranoid of people feel safe.
Routing on any large scale mesh like that would be hell. Perhaps some form of offload, though... for large but not latency-sensitive files. Distributed cacheing, each node with a store, passing pieces between them by wireless.
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I work with children professionally, and the measures we have to go through are panic-inducing. The fact that I choose to work in a school automatically makes me suspicious. We have rules like 'always walk with your hands at chest height, so they cannot accidentially brush a pupil inappropriatly in a corridoor' and 'never stand next to a seated female pupil, lest she believe you are trying to look at her breasts.' No teacher would ever dare to actually be on friendly terms with a pupil, it's just too dangerous. We've even had one dinner lady charged with child grooming for giving a free biscuit.
That's probably why the search of the home. A fishing trip. The prosecutor knew the case was weak, and just wanted to see if there was something, anything, he could use to either strengthen it or force a plea.
The definition of child pornography has been widened several times, always with those responsible claiming it was to close a 'loophole.' It's now reached the point where it can include drawn artwork, completly fictional stories and even (in Australia, anyway) rule 34 joke art of the Simpsons.
Naturally, if you dare to argue that this definition creep is a danger, you will be accused of supporting child rape.
DVD worked the same way - consumer writers are incapable of writing a CSS key block, so even if you do a bit-for-bit read you can't write it back to another disc. Eventually it was broken in an easier manner: Someone figured out how to decrypt CSS, thus rendering the key block unneeded.
It's only been used on a few movies so far, so there hasn't been any real effort put into breaking it.
Weak spot, yes. The one weak spot, no. Blu-ray and HDCP have both been cracked wide open by now.
As someone who writes video filters, I must remind you that the i stands for 'irritating.'
Drug gangs exist to make money. Why would they need piracy to support them?
Not trivial. It's not something an enthusiast can knock out in their home workshop. But any one of the dodgy chinese electronics factories could do it with ease. I expect you'll be able to buy them imported, but it'll be grey market, as US or European distributors would fear legal action.
Pirate conventions place an HD 720p movie at 4.4GB. Not because this is espicially optimal, but because it's convenient. It's the size of a DVD-R. One movie rip, one DVD-R.
Some pirates choose to put extra effort into compression and release smaller files, while some films due to exceptional length or visual demands need a larger file. But most are 4.4GB. Pirates tend to think in terms of filesize rather than bitrate, as filesize is what matters when distributing.
Sneaking an amendment into an appropriations bill. Everyone says it's an underhanded cheat, but it's just too *useful* to prohibit.
Apple need their products to be a little too expensive. It's a branding thing. Their products are seen as premium - if they were sold cheap, people wouldn't see them as special and must-have. It's the same basic model as seen in designer clothing: If it wasn't expensive, people wouldn't have any reason to buy it.
"surely all courier companies and most postal services keep records of items mailed for at least a year"
Recipient, maybe. But most letters sent have no return address - how can they know who sent it? They all get put in mailboxes, no sender ID required.
It could have some uses. Rare, but plausible. I'm thinking more organised crime than hacking, though - "We caught a drug dealer, and he probably arranged purchase by email. Find out who." That, and the usefulness to government of "Give us every email you have addressed to wikileaks and bearing an attachment, so we can see who sent them those documents."
Smart phones? The old dumb phones left a record too. They still had to tell the network where they were in order for it to route the incoming call notification to the correct cell. If you want a non-trackable mobile, you have to go back to the pager days.
Ubiquidous encryption would be a good start. Sure, it's breakable without a very good authentication system, and governments can always get the root CAs to issue something - but it takes time, effort and substantial hardware. It'd make it impossible to mass-trawl tens of thousands of users looking for dirt.
It's not hardware. The killswitch consists of someone in the government calling every major ISP and politely hinting that they really should pull out all those cables and turn off the routers, otherwise the secret police would be more than happy to kick the doors down and do it for them.
"I doubt that many people would be willing to risk it."
Considering that success grants you not just immortality, but power so vast you may take on the title of God? The problem wouldn't be finding volunteers, it'd be screening to keep the meglomaniacs out.
Blame where blame is due. You can blame the Catholics for it - they were preaching that sexual pleasure was inherently sinful and evil long before the Puritans were around. The Puritans just turned it up to eleven, and they wern't the only Protestant grouping to do so.
Aside from the attention-grabbing for the audience, it goes a long way to show his disassociation from humanity. He doesn't wear clothing because he doesn't need to, and no longer cares for petty human taboos. It's not that he is deliberatly flouting social convention - he just doesn't care any more. Total indifference.
He blew up American cities too. That's a quite clear proof that he has gone rogue and is no longer under their control.
The biggest problem I see is that M can be duplicated. He was a lab accident. Ozy managed to duplicate the equipment himself, in order to buy a few seconds. Every government in the world would be trying to duplicate the accident, and sooner or later they will succeed - and not with just one scientist, but with the most patriotic and loyal soldiers in their army. And lots of them.
So everyone says, at least about the Guru. Severe overheating issues.
Encryption can defeat that. The government could still send the police in to sieze the box with the keys on, but doing so is not very stealthy.
It could run an offload, though. Distributed cache. If your neighbour or your neighbour has what you want, you can get it from him. If not, ask nodes you can reach via the internet. Freenet does something like that, though with anti-tracking measures that will make all but the most paranoid of people feel safe.
Routing on any large scale mesh like that would be hell. Perhaps some form of offload, though... for large but not latency-sensitive files. Distributed cacheing, each node with a store, passing pieces between them by wireless.