Honestly, I'd like to see the people responsible arrested.
If some stereotypical l33t haquer d00d who dreams of someday touching an actual girl's boobies had created and distributed the rootkit, he's certainly be arrested if the Feds figured out his identity. Have we given up even the pretense that there is one law for all?
What I cannot support is the poorly veiled vigilantism that passes for the concept of "self-help" in IP circles.
The entire concept of copyright is dependent on the existence of government as the entity that determines where A's rights end and B's rights begin. That is fundamentally incompatible with the whole notion of "self-help".
Mark my words, this going to blow up in their face...as if it already hasn't...and the backlash will felt all throughout the DRM development industry. In fact, it could kill DRM altogether.
The media industry has been relying on the cluelessness of users (to insure that they won't insist on protecting their fair use rights until it's too late). Now, that very cluelessness is going to insure that the warnings about this exploit get dumbed down to "copyright protection software lets viruses into your computer".
He who lives by public ignorance, dies by public ignorance.
It's common practice for a local Blockbuster employee making $8 a hour, to have their personal hard drive computer secure with a $2000 piece of software that requires expertise to use and 90 days for a federal security agency to crack, isn't it?
WTF are you talking about? High-level security software doesn't cost anything like $2000 (for personal use) -- e.g. the personal-use PGP 9.0 package costs US$99 -- and some versions are even free (as in beer).
One argument to the contrary would be that he _is_ benefitting from that tax money he is paying as the company he is working for couldn't exist to give him a job if the roads there weren't built/maintained.
Er, no. The physical infrastructure used by the company is already paid for (by the property taxes on the company offices). New York can't legitimately use the same rationale to collect the same money again from the telecommuting worker.
Oh, it's worse than that. This joker is advising people to file lawsuits knowing that they have no case ("Or threaten to drag the host into a defamation suit against the blogger. The host isn't liable but may skip the hassle and cut off the blogger's access anyway.").
That's called "barratry", and lawyers get disciplined (up to and including disbarred) for it.
By your logic, telemarketers, businesses sending unsolicited postal mail adverstisements, Jehova's witnesses, and any random person who manages to waste a few minutes of your time should be jailed.
Newsflash for you: Tresspassers can be jailed under existing law. After the law is reformed to recognize this form of trespass, the same will be true of spammers (if there are any that are not already subject to jail for commissioning the creation of zombification viruses and worms and other such spammer criminalities).
Wrong. A filter is equivalent to a password or a lock -- its one and only purpose is to keep unauthorized persons out. The only difference is that governments have not yet applied the penalites for breaking the latter two to the first one. It is the repsonsibility of citizens to insist that governments do their job in this regard.
My favorite suggestion is to lock him up with only an e-mail terminal for communication with the prison management. Notification of meal times, exercise breaks in the prison yard, etc would arrive via e-mail, and requests to take a potty break, visit the infirmary, etc would go out via e-mail... interspersed with a flood of spam, disguised to various degrees to look just like the real announcements.
If an announcement gets missed in the flood of spam, he misses that meal (or whatever).
The sentence lasts until the total amount of spam equals that he has sent or caused to be sent.
sending you data through a communications channel you have left open (graciously accepting spam, even) is not theft
Well, since this excuse is inapplicable to any spammer who uses any filter evasion technqiue (no matter how trivial), I assume that you support the punishment of such spammers as if they had broken-and-entered onto an equivalent number of houses.
Yeah, and I'll just bet that he also A) wants to have doors and windows in his house and B) don't want just anybody with enough skill to jimmy the locks to stroll in and take his stuff, and therefore finds that his only solution is to look to the law for help.
Knowing that at any moment the FBI could come and seize everything you have creates a pretty high barrier to entry to the spam trafficking market, at least in the USA. Every raid the FBI makes raises the bar a little bit. Eventually could this cause some other spammers to rethink their choice of lifestyle? Or alternatively, cause more spammers to move offshore, with the risk of having your entire netblock effectively shut off to mail servers?
Precisely.
People sometimes compare spamming to persistent criminal black markets (drugs, prostitution, etc) in order to argue that it just can't be effectively suppressed. However, the difference is that the potential demand for the former is much lower -- it consists entirely of a relatively small cadre of advertisers (as opposed to the potential demand for the latter, whcih consists of anyone who feels normal desires for psychic or physical pleasure). Thus, vigorous enforcement does have a decent chance of effectively suppressing spam -- just get the average cost of spamming above the cost of legitimate advertising, and the whole model collapses.
But surely you don't suggest that spammers like Ralsky are hawking Viagra for Al Qaeda?
I have no idea one way or the other.
What I do know is that spam is just about the perfect method of distributing coded messages to terrorists -- you can't even do traffic analysis if ten million recipients see random anti-spam-filter gibberish and ten recipients recognize the prearranged go-code to carry out the next "martyrdom operation".
The best thing the Feds can do to minimize this threat is to use existing laws related to computer crime, wire fraud, etc to bust as many spammers as possible and anal-probe up the line of their client lists.
Well, the first two lines of the first two triplets are OK, but the third one needs correction:
First they came for the child pornography wierdos
and I did not speak out
because the production of child pornography does actual harm to people incapable of giving informed consent
Then they came for the spammers
and I did not speak out
because spamming does actual harm to people who have not given consent (and, when filter evasion is used, does actual harm to people who have in fact given explicit refusals)
Because the primary point of the story is political (Fox News fesses up to being scammed by a coin-operated "think tank"). The technical merits of OpenDoc versus MSWord are secondary.
i can post anything i want in a blog, totally made up or not, with or without actual sources and face no real consequence. journalists cannot do that in the real media.
Two words: Dan Rather.
(No, retiring doesn't count as "real consequence" if you were about to retire anyway.)
Dan Rather responded several times concerning bloggers as journalists.
Dan said you are not a journalist if you blog anonymously.
You are not a journalist if you ignore discordant views, seeking only to
grind in favor of your own predetermined conclusions.
You are, however, a journalist if you support your predetermined conclusions with forged documents so blatant that citing them is comparable to trying to pass off clips of Plan Nine From Outer Space as genuine UFO photos.
You're claiming that making DVD's not playable on computers doesn't make it harder to distribute illegally?
Er, and this statement has what, exactly, to do with the point of the subthread (that region coding has nothing whatsoever to do with preventing illegal duplication and distribution*)?
*It also has nothing whatsoever to do with preventing armed robbery at sea, but that's also irrelevant.
Slashdot Mirror
If some stereotypical l33t haquer d00d who dreams of someday touching an actual girl's boobies had created and distributed the rootkit, he's certainly be arrested if the Feds figured out his identity. Have we given up even the pretense that there is one law for all?
Just in time for Sweeps Month, too. I can just hear the commercials:
"LISTENING TO A CD YOU BOUGHT AT THE STORE COULD LET HACKERS INTO YOUR COMPUTER!!! WATCH NEWS-AT ELEVEN!!!!"
The entire concept of copyright is dependent on the existence of government as the entity that determines where A's rights end and B's rights begin. That is fundamentally incompatible with the whole notion of "self-help".
The media industry has been relying on the cluelessness of users (to insure that they won't insist on protecting their fair use rights until it's too late). Now, that very cluelessness is going to insure that the warnings about this exploit get dumbed down to "copyright protection software lets viruses into your computer".
He who lives by public ignorance, dies by public ignorance.
Bush is underscoring the US position: we built it; you furriners who want to control it can go install a CAT5 cable where the sun don't shine.
It's common practice for a local Blockbuster employee making $8 a hour, to have their personal hard drive computer secure with a $2000 piece of software that requires expertise to use and 90 days for a federal security agency to crack, isn't it? WTF are you talking about? High-level security software doesn't cost anything like $2000 (for personal use) -- e.g. the personal-use PGP 9.0 package costs US$99 -- and some versions are even free (as in beer).
The fact that it is uniquely easy for J. Random Citizen to disseminate his own message of rebuttal.
Who wants to start posting Barr and Schroeder's voting records?
Or does their objection to doing it "unilaterally" merely mean "our old colleages aren't getting their cut"?
Er, no. The physical infrastructure used by the company is already paid for (by the property taxes on the company offices). New York can't legitimately use the same rationale to collect the same money again from the telecommuting worker.
Oh, it's worse than that. This joker is advising people to file lawsuits knowing that they have no case ("Or threaten to drag the host into a defamation suit against the blogger. The host isn't liable but may skip the hassle and cut off the blogger's access anyway.").
That's called "barratry", and lawyers get disciplined (up to and including disbarred) for it.
Newsflash for you: Tresspassers can be jailed under existing law. After the law is reformed to recognize this form of trespass, the same will be true of spammers (if there are any that are not already subject to jail for commissioning the creation of zombification viruses and worms and other such spammer criminalities).
Wrong. A filter is equivalent to a password or a lock -- its one and only purpose is to keep unauthorized persons out. The only difference is that governments have not yet applied the penalites for breaking the latter two to the first one. It is the repsonsibility of citizens to insist that governments do their job in this regard.
If an announcement gets missed in the flood of spam, he misses that meal (or whatever).
The sentence lasts until the total amount of spam equals that he has sent or caused to be sent.
Well, since this excuse is inapplicable to any spammer who uses any filter evasion technqiue (no matter how trivial), I assume that you support the punishment of such spammers as if they had broken-and-entered onto an equivalent number of houses.
(Or that you're a hypocrite. Whichever.)
I am not a defender of spammers.
[BILL COSBY] Riiiiiiight. [/BILL COSBY]
You're in favor of legalizing air pollution, then.
(Period, not question mark. There is simply no way for you to weasel your way to any other position and remain consistent with that statement.)
There's just no pleasing some people.
Precisely.
People sometimes compare spamming to persistent criminal black markets (drugs, prostitution, etc) in order to argue that it just can't be effectively suppressed. However, the difference is that the potential demand for the former is much lower -- it consists entirely of a relatively small cadre of advertisers (as opposed to the potential demand for the latter, whcih consists of anyone who feels normal desires for psychic or physical pleasure). Thus, vigorous enforcement does have a decent chance of effectively suppressing spam -- just get the average cost of spamming above the cost of legitimate advertising, and the whole model collapses.
The same place the spammers do -- steal it a little at a time from a lot of places via zombie worms/viruses.
I have no idea one way or the other.
What I do know is that spam is just about the perfect method of distributing coded messages to terrorists -- you can't even do traffic analysis if ten million recipients see random anti-spam-filter gibberish and ten recipients recognize the prearranged go-code to carry out the next "martyrdom operation".
The best thing the Feds can do to minimize this threat is to use existing laws related to computer crime, wire fraud, etc to bust as many spammers as possible and anal-probe up the line of their client lists.
Because the primary point of the story is political (Fox News fesses up to being scammed by a coin-operated "think tank"). The technical merits of OpenDoc versus MSWord are secondary.
Two words: Dan Rather.
(No, retiring doesn't count as "real consequence" if you were about to retire anyway.)
Dan said you are not a journalist if you blog anonymously.
You are not a journalist if you ignore discordant views, seeking only to grind in favor of your own predetermined conclusions.
You are, however, a journalist if you support your predetermined conclusions with forged documents so blatant that citing them is comparable to trying to pass off clips of Plan Nine From Outer Space as genuine UFO photos.
"Oh look, Xena! A hot spring! Here, let me help you off with that..."
*Shudder*
I think there's supposed to be a line of asterisks denoting the off-stage activities between "let me help you off with that" and "*shudder*".
Er, and this statement has what, exactly, to do with the point of the subthread (that region coding has nothing whatsoever to do with preventing illegal duplication and distribution*)?
*It also has nothing whatsoever to do with preventing armed robbery at sea, but that's also irrelevant.