Every place I have worked has been paranoid about piracy. Granted, the list isn't large, but I also have friends. Their companies share the software piracy fear.
Now, I'm in a smaller shop, but I carried that compliancy urge with me. The sole reason, I'm getting paid an alright salary (not large enough to worry about saving the company money for some year end bonus insentive) so why should I have to worry about someone causing issues on my network and then forcing me to deal with it.
Only recently were non-software piracy issues cause for worry.
Yeah, I should be careful with generalizations, but every large shop I have seen tends to worry about support contracts and piracy issues.
Now with our OSS stuff we carry our own support, but in this instance the product was being refered to as something fairly critical. It would have to have been damn good if someone wanted to carry a pirated app on their own.
Who knows, the next company might have pirate envy, but why deal with the potential problems if its not your money.
Oddly our local paper and a larger state wide paper carry their classifieds online as well as with the dead tree print.
So while I no longer pick up the paper for the classifieds (the only reason I had to buy it in the first placE) it will at least ensure they continue to generate revenue from the classified section.
I actually didn't know the local paper did it until a friend pointed it out.
"but allowed you to run an efficent, competitive, and focused organization."
This is a rather vague statement... it could be a calendar application.
"The fact is that in this situation everyone knows what happened. A few key employees from one established place took a copy of the server with all the data files and software and all that, and went to establish a competitor in an adjoining state. Same product, 25% cheaper. That 25% is almost entirely made up by the fact that they did not license the software everyone else has to pay for."
Boookooo lawsuit bucks!
Piracy is going to happen, you have to factor this into any software sales. Even if you hadn't removed the licensing features they would have been worked around anyway given enough time. (Assumming the software was truely popular enough)
It really does sound like the product did a good job, but was horribly expensive. Combine that with bad decisions and lack of a legal offense for clear software theft, it seems to spell disaster.
Yeah, piracy is bad, but lets be honest here... most companies don't pirate software that is critical to their infrastructure as they need support contracts when something goes awry.
"ensure that you can track illicit activity back to the source if requested to do so by a court order"
I certainly would not say that in the blanket fashion you have. EFF[.org] has a nice document describing best logging practices.
Geez o pete, people do assume the worst when something is said. I should have clarified that really all you want to do is make sure you can match an IP address with a given user. ie, no aoniminity within your network.
Logs are in regard to services you provide with in the realm of such things as mail and http. I'm not suggesting packet logging! You want to respec t an individuals privacy, but provide the necessary accountability if something bad should happen.
I always thought about this too and yeah you could easily get away with NOT producing evidence. However, that trick won't work forever and eventually your credit would be in question.
So maybe next time, they don't ask for logs in good faith, but instead slap a box on your network to do the logging for them. Maybe, the guy gets caught somewhere else and while not being a credible witness decides to testify he did so do the crime in question and in return they cut him some slack and turn prosection your way.
Those are a bunch of what if's really and I even posed the question to an officer once. He was part of an internet crime division (early stages at the time) and I said just those words to him.
When it really comes down to it, its our word that the court takes into consideration. Yeah, someone can fight it, but they have to find a niche the court is willing to hear. It's the same concept when a police officer sights you for a crime. Sure, you can contest it and go down on record contesting it, but if those complaints are few and far between no one is really going to question the officer.
That being said, if you want to fight log files, you would have to prove an inconsistancy in their logging process.
In any event, I always considered myself one of the good guys and the police were really helpful when it came down to beating on someone who came after our network.
Now the RIAA, I made them deal with our legal department.
If your neighbors/customers are doing something wrong... why risk the legal hassle and cost of protecting them?
I'm not recommending packet logging, but simply keeping logs of data sent through standard services. On the flip side it can also be rarely used to vindicate them in the case of a false report.
I once had a call regarding an illegal offense that occurred and recieved a prelimnary call just to see if we had the authentication logs to match an IP address to a dial-up user. If we did have the data a warrant for the documentation would have been presented. The offender lucked out and it just so happened that we had a problem 3 months prior and lost a chunk of data. We also happened to run into a failure with our tape archive (library unit died and that was in the lot of tapes suspect of failure)... though there is some other detail I can't remember about the problem with retrieving that data was about.
So long story short... some guy lucked out and didn't get caught. Thankfully, we weren't the only place he was connecting from.
Unofficially, I was told it was child pornography, but being I had nothing to say thats what it was it could have just been insentive to get the job done.
In any event, all ruels aside, anything a reseller does besides accountability is simply extra.
Me, I would do accounting on bandwidth usage and have soft recommendations as its a shared resource and to make it work effectively its going to have to be monitored.
If dont right... it could be quite a good deal for everyone.
This is one of those cases where some simple common sense comes into play.
Alright, so you not going to be an illicit reseller, but an authorized body capable of forming a legal binding agreements with your customers.
ISP's do this all the time... they simple resell bandwidth they have purchased from their providers.
Basically, write out what services you will provide and clearly define what you won't allow. It needs to be clearly written and agreed upon by your clients.
After that, you simply need to track ip addresses (assumming DHCP will be in iuse), keep mail logs (if you provide smtp/pop service) and generally ensure that you can track illicit activity back to the source if requested to do so by a court order.
It's simply a matter of accountability and this is something you can easily do given it is a service you can provide.
Anything else is just extra, but it would probably be a good idea to track bandwidth usage.
If you just control + L you can enter a search, but it gives the first hit.
Me, I have been using the google search via control + k.
The side search feature was neat, but yeah... I hate that wasted space as well. With the above two commands I pretty much avoid the mouse through my entire run.
I'll have to give the new mozilla a run, but I switch to firefox for speed. It was running signifantly faster then mozilla and thus my switch.
I suspect they don't police their file integrity much at all.
Try searching for software DVD player on cnet. (I don't believe such software truely exists in the windows world... at least not a free one)
Anyhow, the cliprex player says it does play DVD's, but after downloading it... it was a different story.
This sucker is packed with tons of great spyware and best all it... it never dared played dvd's. In fact, reading all of the reviews... it seemed only the astro-turfers were actually claiming it worked.
Call it a night of drinking and gullibility. I thought I could just clean out the spyware and nab a free player for my system.
I never did truely get it off the system until I reinstalled some time later.
All in all this was a while ago, but I dare not dabble with that software again.
Slashdot Mirror
If that is the gig you want to get into, but sounds like a legal hassle to me.
I think this guy was wanting something safe.
Again, people keep generalizing these statements and this was all in regards to his network and his services he offers.
Every place I have worked has been paranoid about piracy. Granted, the list isn't large, but I also have friends. Their companies share the software piracy fear.
Now, I'm in a smaller shop, but I carried that compliancy urge with me. The sole reason, I'm getting paid an alright salary (not large enough to worry about saving the company money for some year end bonus insentive) so why should I have to worry about someone causing issues on my network and then forcing me to deal with it.
Only recently were non-software piracy issues cause for worry.
Yeah, I should be careful with generalizations, but every large shop I have seen tends to worry about support contracts and piracy issues.
Now with our OSS stuff we carry our own support, but in this instance the product was being refered to as something fairly critical. It would have to have been damn good if someone wanted to carry a pirated app on their own.
Who knows, the next company might have pirate envy, but why deal with the potential problems if its not your money.
Oddly our local paper and a larger state wide paper carry their classifieds online as well as with the dead tree print.
So while I no longer pick up the paper for the classifieds (the only reason I had to buy it in the first placE) it will at least ensure they continue to generate revenue from the classified section.
I actually didn't know the local paper did it until a friend pointed it out.
So change comes slowly, but eventually...
What was this product?
"but allowed you to run an efficent, competitive, and focused organization."
This is a rather vague statement... it could be a calendar application.
"The fact is that in this situation everyone knows what happened. A few key employees from one established place took a copy of the server with all the data files and software and all that, and went to establish a competitor in an adjoining state. Same product, 25% cheaper. That 25% is almost entirely made up by the fact that they did not license the software everyone else has to pay for."
Boookooo lawsuit bucks!
Piracy is going to happen, you have to factor this into any software sales. Even if you hadn't removed the licensing features they would have been worked around anyway given enough time. (Assumming the software was truely popular enough)
It really does sound like the product did a good job, but was horribly expensive. Combine that with bad decisions and lack of a legal offense for clear software theft, it seems to spell disaster.
Yeah, piracy is bad, but lets be honest here... most companies don't pirate software that is critical to their infrastructure as they need support contracts when something goes awry.
"ensure that you can track illicit activity back to the source if requested to do so by a court order"
I certainly would not say that in the blanket fashion you have. EFF[.org] has a nice document describing best logging practices.
Geez o pete, people do assume the worst when something is said. I should have clarified that really all you want to do is make sure you can match an IP address with a given user. ie, no aoniminity within your network.
Logs are in regard to services you provide with in the realm of such things as mail and http. I'm not suggesting packet logging! You want to respec t an individuals privacy, but provide the necessary accountability if something bad should happen.
Yeah,
I always thought about this too and yeah you could easily get away with NOT producing evidence. However, that trick won't work forever and eventually your credit would be in question.
So maybe next time, they don't ask for logs in good faith, but instead slap a box on your network to do the logging for them. Maybe, the guy gets caught somewhere else and while not being a credible witness decides to testify he did so do the crime in question and in return they cut him some slack and turn prosection your way.
Those are a bunch of what if's really and I even posed the question to an officer once. He was part of an internet crime division (early stages at the time) and I said just those words to him.
When it really comes down to it, its our word that the court takes into consideration. Yeah, someone can fight it, but they have to find a niche the court is willing to hear. It's the same concept when a police officer sights you for a crime. Sure, you can contest it and go down on record contesting it, but if those complaints are few and far between no one is really going to question the officer.
That being said, if you want to fight log files, you would have to prove an inconsistancy in their logging process.
In any event, I always considered myself one of the good guys and the police were really helpful when it came down to beating on someone who came after our network.
Now the RIAA, I made them deal with our legal department.
Again...
This is for accountability sake.
If your neighbors/customers are doing something wrong... why risk the legal hassle and cost of protecting them?
I'm not recommending packet logging, but simply keeping logs of data sent through standard services. On the flip side it can also be rarely used to vindicate them in the case of a false report.
I once had a call regarding an illegal offense that occurred and recieved a prelimnary call just to see if we had the authentication logs to match an IP address to a dial-up user. If we did have the data a warrant for the documentation would have been presented. The offender lucked out and it just so happened that we had a problem 3 months prior and lost a chunk of data. We also happened to run into a failure with our tape archive (library unit died and that was in the lot of tapes suspect of failure)... though there is some other detail I can't remember about the problem with retrieving that data was about.
So long story short... some guy lucked out and didn't get caught. Thankfully, we weren't the only place he was connecting from.
Unofficially, I was told it was child pornography, but being I had nothing to say thats what it was it could have just been insentive to get the job done.
In any event, all ruels aside, anything a reseller does besides accountability is simply extra.
Me, I would do accounting on bandwidth usage and have soft recommendations as its a shared resource and to make it work effectively its going to have to be monitored.
If dont right... it could be quite a good deal for everyone.
This is one of those cases where some simple common sense comes into play.
Alright, so you not going to be an illicit reseller, but an authorized body capable of forming a legal binding agreements with your customers.
ISP's do this all the time... they simple resell bandwidth they have purchased from their providers.
Basically, write out what services you will provide and clearly define what you won't allow. It needs to be clearly written and agreed upon by your clients.
After that, you simply need to track ip addresses (assumming DHCP will be in iuse), keep mail logs (if you provide smtp/pop service) and generally ensure that you can track illicit activity back to the source if requested to do so by a court order.
It's simply a matter of accountability and this is something you can easily do given it is a service you can provide.
Anything else is just extra, but it would probably be a good idea to track bandwidth usage.
FC3 won't open the HLP files.
Damn you linux... you have hindered me for the last time!
It's not a war to be won, people simply need to stop sending unsolicited messages...
If they can't play by the rules... then they get slapped around.
I'm actually surprised someone came up with a definition of spam that was good enough to use in court.
Well...
If you just control + L you can enter a search, but it gives the first hit.
Me, I have been using the google search via control + k.
The side search feature was neat, but yeah... I hate that wasted space as well. With the above two commands I pretty much avoid the mouse through my entire run.
I'll have to give the new mozilla a run, but I switch to firefox for speed. It was running signifantly faster then mozilla and thus my switch.
I bought a slim book looking DVD player for 35$ and it hasn't given me any problems. It even reads +R.
My only gripe... it doesn't have a tuner... everything is Composite, YUV and S-Video.
Nice picture though.
I looked up destroy china....
The first link was to a spyware cleaner.
I suspect they don't police their file integrity much at all.
Try searching for software DVD player on cnet. (I don't believe such software truely exists in the windows world... at least not a free one)
Anyhow, the cliprex player says it does play DVD's, but after downloading it... it was a different story.
This sucker is packed with tons of great spyware and best all it... it never dared played dvd's. In fact, reading all of the reviews... it seemed only the astro-turfers were actually claiming it worked.
Call it a night of drinking and gullibility. I thought I could just clean out the spyware and nab a free player for my system.
I never did truely get it off the system until I reinstalled some time later.
All in all this was a while ago, but I dare not dabble with that software again.
You gave Mars herpies!
There are so many odd ones out there.
/odd combination/* and find some goofy ones.
You can whois
ASDFASDFASDFASDFAWDFSADFASDFSDF.NET
Whois is fun!
I have nothing like that where I live.
;)
Thus I'm limited to purchases on the net.
Yeah, I'll check it out.
scpoaxmeh@yahoo.com
My address does not contain spam
I have no problem putting together a controller or ordering piece online, but I have some difficulty in obtaining an actual arcade cabinet.
Anywhere to get one of these online...
And I hate eBay... an old saying comes to mind... "A wretched hive of scum and villainy"
What about the i-mac!
Apple did very well with its entry level macintosh.
The idea is not to catch people...
The idea is they know tracking will be an issue and you won't get caught up in the middle of it.
God damn, people need to get a sense of humor.
This was a joking reference to a simpson's episode. It's obvious it was a joke and we had several good laughs come down the pipe on this thread alone.
Worthless moderation system...
I want my monkey man!
Actually, if enough people manage to read this then it won't ever be a problem again....
Honestly, if you really wanted to make this work and just get left alone by the FBI and the kiddies...
Download links could be generated at request with a unique identifier embedded.
Thusly, if someone generates a dynamic link and pastes that into their term for wget... bam... you have an identifiable link with both addresses.
just make sure everything is logged quite properly.
It would certain ease the issue of tracking.
Slashoted before the comments even rolled in.
It's just target practice, but keep browsers handy for a real potential threat.
W can then say his really nifty new catch phrase, "And I'll Form The Head!"