It was likely data stored in the metadata section that wasn't tagged with a standard tag. Reading it out in a text editor/hex editor would show you the culprit, but it wouldn't show up in a standard field. Most likely, it was designed to buffer overflow the parser of some common mp3 player like WinAmp.
One of the first exploits for OS X back in the day was actually malware dressed up as an MP3 with the appropriate headers. It took advantage of a flaw in the header reading code of iTunes to buffer overflow and then use the iTunes memory space to escalate privilege.
Of course, the flaw in the library was patched pretty quickly, and nobody's tried it again since, but mp3s have been attack vectors for at least 10 years.
It reads ePubs, including the ones Amazon has wrapped in their own proprietary DRM. The key here is that the actual reader reads the ePub format... the DRM code unwraps the ePubs so the reader can read it. If you serve it an ePub without the DRM, it'll still read it.
Kind of like saying iTunes plays AAC audio. Some of it may be FairPlay-wrapped, but it's still the AAC audio that's being played.
If not out of fear?, do enlighten since you seem to quote big numbers from somewhere ( perhaps your arse? ). It would make no sense for an up n up company to go all out war ( financial and business suicide anyone? ).
Good one piss off the masses. or perhaps the truth is your a Apple / Jobs fanboy.
I think the answer is more "to appease shareholder greed" than "because they are failing".
Look at it this way: Apple now has a pretty steady profit, and has a lot of money in reserve. How can they increase revenues to increase shareholder profitability, based on what they already have?
Answer: If they just start suing everyone, they'll be counter-sued, and it'll come out as a wash. However, if SOMEONE ELSE starts suing everyone but them, this means that they can afford a) smaller margins than everyone else and so make more relative profit on their current offerings, and b) to "innovate" in ways that everyone else can't, as others are currently tied up in lawsuits regarding the IP so can't legally move forward in those areas.
Of course, this also completely demolishes the old "defensive patent portfolio" argument, as it shows that everyone can protect themselves from return fire by using shell companies to sue in the first place. The only way around this is for the others to say "call them off Apple, or we'll sue YOU in the same way." But Apple has a large enough war chest that they could probably just laugh that off from most other companies.
So... was this the result of some "get rich quick" scheme by a Martian drywall factory run amok?
Could it happen here too?
Wait until they discover that all of the free-flowing water on Mars turned to gypsum due to some bioengineered algae that mutated to escape replication control....
Actually, a more reasonable comparison would be that someone reported your marijuana grow-op, and the feds came in and confiscated your property for a year... without first checking and verifying that you actually had a license to grow medical marijuana.
The sad thing is that this *shouldn't* be a reasonable comparison, as marijuana is a controlled substance, whereas MP3s shouldn't be. No license should be needed to prove you can host MP3 files; it should be* more like the following:
Someone reported your cornfields as containing illegal Monsanto derivative corn. The feds came in and stopped all sales of your crop, confiscating your current crop, without first checking your corn and discovering that it actually is derived from heritage seed (and yes, this happens too).
*once again, it shouldn't actually be, but based on interpretation of current laws, it should be.
To clarify: This is designed to secure your connection between your laptop over wifi to your DNS server -- that server being an OpenDNS server, which just happens to support this already. If you have your laptop hardwired to use an OpenDNS IP for DNS resolution and enter a Starbucks, someone else on the public network can't mess with the results of your queries, as they're already encrypted all the way to the first DNS hop. After that, it's not as much of an issue (assuming you actually TRUST the person hosting the OpenDNS server -- and ANYONE can host an OpenDNS server).
How many unique DNS requests leave your network in a 1 hour period? My guess is: fewer than 60, unless you're a search engine or security firm. Even running torrents with DNS resolution won't go much beyond this. How many SSL handshakes are performed in that period? I'd guess hundreds.
Think about it this way: web browsers these days tend to proactively resolve domains. Since most network activity uses a web browser or a fixed domain (email, etc.), the usage should be minimal (except for p2p, where it'll still be reasonable).
Indeed... I switched to GoogleDNS from OpenDNS a while after it came out. I figure Google already knows everything about me they're likely to find out from DNS data.
As a counter to this, a lesson we've learned from the RIAA is that anyone who has an ad banner on their website is getting paid. I presume this applies to bloggers too... some of who are able to live off the profits of their blog, despite not being affiliated with any agency. However, from what the judge said in this instance, if such a blogger was practicing with a shred of jouranlistic integrity, this wouldn't have been an issue.
Also, shield laws protect sources; they don't protect journalists from libel suits. Journalistic investigation and evidence are supposed to protect journalists from libel. If they're missing, a journalist can be sued just like anyone else (and they'll likely lose their job).
Sounds right to me... you've got the right to say anything; not the right to be protected from the results, nor the right to be heard. It's always been this way.
Only partially misleading... the configuration provided access via a roundabout route to the admin credentials, which could be used to legitimately mess with the issuing system by escalating access privileges. It's not a case of "they left the issuing system wide open!" but it is a case of "they left an entry point to their management system wide open!" which can eventually result in the same thing... with fewer ways to track monkeying with the issuing system, as the attacker will be using legit creds, and may even be accessing via a legit admin's address.
Actually, the last robocall that called me WAS calling from Texas. I got through to a real person, and my opening gambit was "what part of the US is your call centre located in?" He must have been new, because he answered, and was then very confused. I then explained to him that the people who hired the people who hired his call centre were engaged in illegal activity, in contravention of numerous laws, and asked to speak to his manager. HE didn't know what to do, but eventually I heard the click of someone else joining the call, and then it terminated.
When politicians robocall, I just respond with an email stating that there's a reason we have DNC lists and antispam laws... and if they want to continue to be popular, they'll honour their constituent's right to privacy.
Amazingly, this results in only one call per party per election. Except the Green party... they can't afford a robocaller, so they end up with a bunch of wooden placards littering the landscape instead.
To test, I think you'd have to set up your own cell, as this doesn't use the wifi network. People with their own personal cell tower to test with probably work for or with the carriers, and so are under NDA WRT the whole thing. About the only thing that could be done is a custom android build with this installed that would spit out the data before it was handed over to the radio. As the carriers have already stated that they use it to monitor QoS, there are likely trigger conditions that will cause the data to be sent... kind of like sending MS or Apple your crash logs. The fact that the end user is NOT alerted that anything is being sent is the real issue. Likely the carriers figure that it's their network and their device data that's at issue here, and they don't really care about personal info for the task at hand, so they've never considered the gross privacy violations that the system potentially enables.
I stated that Social Security is a benefit that is paid for. That is to say: I pay money to social security, and in return for this payment, social security pays me when I retire.
And I pointed out that this argument is incorrect. It is not paid for when you retire. You are instead paying for (now mostly paying for since revenue no longer meets expenses) current retirees not future ones.
um? statement 1: I pay in to SS, and it pays me when I retire. statement 2: Statement 1 is incorrect: you have not paid for your SS when you retire
Time to re-read what the gp said. He stated nothing about receiving "his" money back when he retires. He said he paid for a service, and expects to receive that service at the levels deemed appropriate by Congress, as stated in the original agreement.
Now that we've got the comprehension and reasoning sorted out, I believe lgw is actually correct in his response of how SS works -- that is, you're BOTH wrong, and the SS tax is not linked in any but the most tenuous of ways with SS payouts. A change to one system will not necessarily directly affect the other. Both systems combined are actually standard socialist distribution of wealth to help those who are at a disadvantage.
Forget about who has more money... the system is *supposed* to work like this: 1. you pay into SS 2. At a certain age, the government positions things so that work is no longer lucrative (mandatory retirement, etc.) 3. In recompense for yanking the rug out from under you like this, they "guarantee" a *minimal* standard of living whether you're working or not at this age, from funds gathered through the SS tax.
Of course, what with the baby boom, investments, changing the laws so that retirement's not mandatory, etc. it doesn't really work like this. But if you look at it statistically, I'd guess that for the most part, it DOES still work like this. People just want more than a minimal living, and others don't want to have to pay for a service that may not exist when they're ready to cash in on it.
Remember: the only people who don't get old are those who die young... and those people shouldn't be worrying about whether they are going to be able to cash in on SS when they're old.
A painter also will not be able to paint one house and then get money for the rest of his life while doing nothing.
Depends on the painter and the house... if the paint job becomes famous and he charges people to view it, he could indeed get money for the rest of his life while doing nothing.
Of course, the more likely result would be that someone else would charge people to view it and make money for the rest of their life while doing not much (eg. Sistine Chapel).
This is essentially the last word on the copyright dilemma at this time. It will occur with every digital item, times every downloader, forever until we get Non-Purchase methods of giving value back to the producers.
I hate to break it to you, but we already have non-purchase (and pre-production) methods of giving value back to the producers. The only impediments to using these methods across the board are vested interests who are locked into the current purchase methods and don't want to take the hit on their currently functioning-very-well-thank-you-very-much business model. They already have enough power and clout that they're finding methods of perpetuating their model which are in turn affecting our social structure, such that the argument you made actually makes sense to a lot of people... and they never realise all the assumptions the argument's conclusions ride on.
The entire concept of "forcing me to delay my revenue at your whim" shows how far our society has shifted. In MOST lines of work, we ask for a contract that guarantees revenue in an on-going basis. Even contract work generally doesn't wait until the contract is completed before all "debts" are called in.
Believe it or not, I work in an industry that produces no physical product, similar to the entertainment industry. The results of my work are sold to millions of people, and my company makes a nice profit. However, society at large also benefits from my work, and a lot of the core information generated by my work enters the public domain daily.
Why does this work? Because if I stopped producing intellectual property today, all the work I did in the past would eventually lose relevance in the current cultural space. Unless society is stagnant, there is a continual demand for new ideas and new implementations of old ideas.
Something else to remember: the entire concept of purchasing and product value is a fabrication. If people find that they make less money based on what they do, they have to personally decide if it is worth doing that. If they decide it's worth doing, that means they'll be contributing product into their society with fewer demands on society, so society as a whole benefits. If they decide it's not worth doing (for example, I've never sold any music for personal profit despite the fact that I'm a fairly decent musician), they can choose to produce for some other reason, or choose to do something else with their free and not-free time.
The reason we have inflation in western society is that there is a gap between actual value of work and the amount being paid to certain segments. Since this gap has to be filled from somewhere, it is usually filled by devaluing the currency of the other market segments... in essence, stealing from the balanced segments to prop up the inflated segments.
Getting back to my point... the common reason a producer of intellectual goods sets, say $20 as the value they're willing to charge for a product is that that's the top value they feel they need to be enriched by that the market will bear. If the next guy over is selling a similar game for 99 cents, and so is the guy beside him, the average cost in that segment is significantly lower, and the guy charging $20 is going to find that the market won't bear the price. Propping up that price effectively skews the market segment and causes inflation -- he is in fact stealing from society at large to attempt to gain an advantage.
Society's response is to: give him the advantage (happens all the time) and let everyone else cover the discrepancy in order to enrich society with the products of his work, ignore his demands and take the product at or below market value (also happens all the time) toward the same ends, or ignore the product altogether, thus resulting in a lot of effort that a single person is hoarding from society as a whole, as they've produced a work based on those who came before them, and then given none of the results back to society to enrich it.
Most likely, if the Swiss can get all global content for free, they'll be more likely to spend their money saved on entertainment product produced domestically, such as local concerts and other venues. This way, the local entertainment economy is significantly boosted by legal downloading. Some spillover will even go back into the global entertainment market. See my other comments for why this model likely wouldn't work in the US.
In the US, I think that if people found they were able to get something they wanted for free, they'd be more likely to spend the money they now had available on the next item down their list of what they wanted, as the US market is driven by avarice (there's ALWAYS something else people want... often because the marketers tell them they want it). For example, this year's iGadget, a vacation to some tropical place, more ice cream and potato chips, a home theater system, a new paint job for their car, etc. All the things that they've always wanted to spend money on, but prioritize lower than their entertainment budget.
In more socialist countries like the Netherlands and Switzerland (and to some degree even the UK, Canada and Australia), people are more likely to spend how they want to spend, and supplement that with what's available for free that fits their lifestyle.
What works in some countries doesn't work in others.
The multiple layers serve a purpose: they promote the product to people who don't live their lives on the Internet.
...and so why are people who live their lives on the internet having to pay for this, exactly? The majority of people consuming this type of entertainment DO live their lives via social media these days. For those few who still listen to the radio and then go buy the music in a B&M store, wouldn't it make MORE sense to level the playing field, and prevent the radio lock-in and payola corruption we currently have in place? After all, it's that payola you're arguing to protect. You're saying that self-promotion won't work because these big labels have a racket going that's funded by the current model that prevents it.
Instead of protecting the racket, doesn't it make more sense to fix the problem?
Of course, the labels (big and indy) do more than just get your music on the airwaves... they also do strategic market integration, organise and coordinate global release schedules, bring together visual, audio, written and performing artists, etc. But they do this as a paid service. They could still offer these services to artists without requiring lock-in (you don't buy the entire package from us with this glitzy cash advance, you don't get nuthin') like they do today. This isn't acceptable in any other form of business, and in the tech industry, many companies have been taken to task for doing exactly this.
So what you're saying is that it would take someone with a sat network large enough, like China, enough intel on the protocol (which I'm sure China either has or could get -- it's not a secret) and some sort of a reason to either make the US look bad or to prove that they could accomplish such a feat through such a large expanse of space... say, like a country that is trying to prove it is the next up-and-comer in the space race.
That said, I really don't see why any such country would bother; they'd rather put a man on Mars or explore the solar system for exploitable natural resources.
Slashdot Mirror
It was likely data stored in the metadata section that wasn't tagged with a standard tag. Reading it out in a text editor/hex editor would show you the culprit, but it wouldn't show up in a standard field. Most likely, it was designed to buffer overflow the parser of some common mp3 player like WinAmp.
One of the first exploits for OS X back in the day was actually malware dressed up as an MP3 with the appropriate headers. It took advantage of a flaw in the header reading code of iTunes to buffer overflow and then use the iTunes memory space to escalate privilege.
Of course, the flaw in the library was patched pretty quickly, and nobody's tried it again since, but mp3s have been attack vectors for at least 10 years.
It reads ePubs, including the ones Amazon has wrapped in their own proprietary DRM. The key here is that the actual reader reads the ePub format... the DRM code unwraps the ePubs so the reader can read it. If you serve it an ePub without the DRM, it'll still read it.
Kind of like saying iTunes plays AAC audio. Some of it may be FairPlay-wrapped, but it's still the AAC audio that's being played.
The bottom line is then:
"WHY ARE THEY DOING THIS SHIT THEN?"
If not out of fear?, do enlighten since you seem to quote big numbers from somewhere ( perhaps your arse? ). It would make no sense for an up n up company to go all out war ( financial and business suicide anyone? ).
Good one piss off the masses. or perhaps the truth is your a Apple / Jobs fanboy.
I think the answer is more "to appease shareholder greed" than "because they are failing".
Look at it this way: Apple now has a pretty steady profit, and has a lot of money in reserve. How can they increase revenues to increase shareholder profitability, based on what they already have?
Answer: If they just start suing everyone, they'll be counter-sued, and it'll come out as a wash. However, if SOMEONE ELSE starts suing everyone but them, this means that they can afford a) smaller margins than everyone else and so make more relative profit on their current offerings, and b) to "innovate" in ways that everyone else can't, as others are currently tied up in lawsuits regarding the IP so can't legally move forward in those areas.
Of course, this also completely demolishes the old "defensive patent portfolio" argument, as it shows that everyone can protect themselves from return fire by using shell companies to sue in the first place. The only way around this is for the others to say "call them off Apple, or we'll sue YOU in the same way." But Apple has a large enough war chest that they could probably just laugh that off from most other companies.
It has a completely different target... as does MPEG-1 and MPEG-2. Theora goes after the same target as MPEG-2 IIRC.
So... was this the result of some "get rich quick" scheme by a Martian drywall factory run amok?
Could it happen here too?
Wait until they discover that all of the free-flowing water on Mars turned to gypsum due to some bioengineered algae that mutated to escape replication control....
Actually, a more reasonable comparison would be that someone reported your marijuana grow-op, and the feds came in and confiscated your property for a year... without first checking and verifying that you actually had a license to grow medical marijuana.
The sad thing is that this *shouldn't* be a reasonable comparison, as marijuana is a controlled substance, whereas MP3s shouldn't be. No license should be needed to prove you can host MP3 files; it should be* more like the following:
Someone reported your cornfields as containing illegal Monsanto derivative corn. The feds came in and stopped all sales of your crop, confiscating your current crop, without first checking your corn and discovering that it actually is derived from heritage seed (and yes, this happens too).
*once again, it shouldn't actually be, but based on interpretation of current laws, it should be.
To clarify: This is designed to secure your connection between your laptop over wifi to your DNS server -- that server being an OpenDNS server, which just happens to support this already. If you have your laptop hardwired to use an OpenDNS IP for DNS resolution and enter a Starbucks, someone else on the public network can't mess with the results of your queries, as they're already encrypted all the way to the first DNS hop. After that, it's not as much of an issue (assuming you actually TRUST the person hosting the OpenDNS server -- and ANYONE can host an OpenDNS server).
How many unique DNS requests leave your network in a 1 hour period? My guess is: fewer than 60, unless you're a search engine or security firm. Even running torrents with DNS resolution won't go much beyond this. How many SSL handshakes are performed in that period? I'd guess hundreds.
Think about it this way: web browsers these days tend to proactively resolve domains. Since most network activity uses a web browser or a fixed domain (email, etc.), the usage should be minimal (except for p2p, where it'll still be reasonable).
Indeed... I switched to GoogleDNS from OpenDNS a while after it came out. I figure Google already knows everything about me they're likely to find out from DNS data.
As a counter to this, a lesson we've learned from the RIAA is that anyone who has an ad banner on their website is getting paid. I presume this applies to bloggers too... some of who are able to live off the profits of their blog, despite not being affiliated with any agency. However, from what the judge said in this instance, if such a blogger was practicing with a shred of jouranlistic integrity, this wouldn't have been an issue.
Also, shield laws protect sources; they don't protect journalists from libel suits. Journalistic investigation and evidence are supposed to protect journalists from libel. If they're missing, a journalist can be sued just like anyone else (and they'll likely lose their job).
Sounds right to me... you've got the right to say anything; not the right to be protected from the results, nor the right to be heard. It's always been this way.
Only partially misleading... the configuration provided access via a roundabout route to the admin credentials, which could be used to legitimately mess with the issuing system by escalating access privileges. It's not a case of "they left the issuing system wide open!" but it is a case of "they left an entry point to their management system wide open!" which can eventually result in the same thing... with fewer ways to track monkeying with the issuing system, as the attacker will be using legit creds, and may even be accessing via a legit admin's address.
Actually, the last robocall that called me WAS calling from Texas. I got through to a real person, and my opening gambit was "what part of the US is your call centre located in?" He must have been new, because he answered, and was then very confused. I then explained to him that the people who hired the people who hired his call centre were engaged in illegal activity, in contravention of numerous laws, and asked to speak to his manager. HE didn't know what to do, but eventually I heard the click of someone else joining the call, and then it terminated.
When politicians robocall, I just respond with an email stating that there's a reason we have DNC lists and antispam laws... and if they want to continue to be popular, they'll honour their constituent's right to privacy.
Amazingly, this results in only one call per party per election. Except the Green party... they can't afford a robocaller, so they end up with a bunch of wooden placards littering the landscape instead.
This would be for the communications link embedded within the space elevator cables.
is this part of some sort of psyops mission ?
I misread that as sysops for a second...
Reading your statement, I became confused... are you talking about Iranians or Americans?
To test, I think you'd have to set up your own cell, as this doesn't use the wifi network. People with their own personal cell tower to test with probably work for or with the carriers, and so are under NDA WRT the whole thing. About the only thing that could be done is a custom android build with this installed that would spit out the data before it was handed over to the radio. As the carriers have already stated that they use it to monitor QoS, there are likely trigger conditions that will cause the data to be sent... kind of like sending MS or Apple your crash logs. The fact that the end user is NOT alerted that anything is being sent is the real issue. Likely the carriers figure that it's their network and their device data that's at issue here, and they don't really care about personal info for the task at hand, so they've never considered the gross privacy violations that the system potentially enables.
Or they've been mandated to install it.
I stated that Social Security is a benefit that is paid for. That is to say: I pay money to social security, and in return for this payment, social security pays me when I retire.
And I pointed out that this argument is incorrect. It is not paid for when you retire. You are instead paying for (now mostly paying for since revenue no longer meets expenses) current retirees not future ones.
um?
statement 1: I pay in to SS, and it pays me when I retire.
statement 2: Statement 1 is incorrect: you have not paid for your SS when you retire
Time to re-read what the gp said. He stated nothing about receiving "his" money back when he retires. He said he paid for a service, and expects to receive that service at the levels deemed appropriate by Congress, as stated in the original agreement.
Now that we've got the comprehension and reasoning sorted out, I believe lgw is actually correct in his response of how SS works -- that is, you're BOTH wrong, and the SS tax is not linked in any but the most tenuous of ways with SS payouts. A change to one system will not necessarily directly affect the other. Both systems combined are actually standard socialist distribution of wealth to help those who are at a disadvantage.
Forget about who has more money... the system is *supposed* to work like this:
1. you pay into SS
2. At a certain age, the government positions things so that work is no longer lucrative (mandatory retirement, etc.)
3. In recompense for yanking the rug out from under you like this, they "guarantee" a *minimal* standard of living whether you're working or not at this age, from funds gathered through the SS tax.
Of course, what with the baby boom, investments, changing the laws so that retirement's not mandatory, etc. it doesn't really work like this. But if you look at it statistically, I'd guess that for the most part, it DOES still work like this. People just want more than a minimal living, and others don't want to have to pay for a service that may not exist when they're ready to cash in on it.
Remember: the only people who don't get old are those who die young... and those people shouldn't be worrying about whether they are going to be able to cash in on SS when they're old.
A painter also will not be able to paint one house and then get money for the rest of his life while doing nothing.
Depends on the painter and the house... if the paint job becomes famous and he charges people to view it, he could indeed get money for the rest of his life while doing nothing.
Of course, the more likely result would be that someone else would charge people to view it and make money for the rest of their life while doing not much (eg. Sistine Chapel).
Just saying ;)
This is essentially the last word on the copyright dilemma at this time. It will occur with every digital item, times every downloader, forever until we get Non-Purchase methods of giving value back to the producers.
I hate to break it to you, but we already have non-purchase (and pre-production) methods of giving value back to the producers. The only impediments to using these methods across the board are vested interests who are locked into the current purchase methods and don't want to take the hit on their currently functioning-very-well-thank-you-very-much business model. They already have enough power and clout that they're finding methods of perpetuating their model which are in turn affecting our social structure, such that the argument you made actually makes sense to a lot of people... and they never realise all the assumptions the argument's conclusions ride on.
The entire concept of "forcing me to delay my revenue at your whim" shows how far our society has shifted. In MOST lines of work, we ask for a contract that guarantees revenue in an on-going basis. Even contract work generally doesn't wait until the contract is completed before all "debts" are called in.
Believe it or not, I work in an industry that produces no physical product, similar to the entertainment industry. The results of my work are sold to millions of people, and my company makes a nice profit. However, society at large also benefits from my work, and a lot of the core information generated by my work enters the public domain daily.
Why does this work? Because if I stopped producing intellectual property today, all the work I did in the past would eventually lose relevance in the current cultural space. Unless society is stagnant, there is a continual demand for new ideas and new implementations of old ideas.
Something else to remember: the entire concept of purchasing and product value is a fabrication. If people find that they make less money based on what they do, they have to personally decide if it is worth doing that. If they decide it's worth doing, that means they'll be contributing product into their society with fewer demands on society, so society as a whole benefits. If they decide it's not worth doing (for example, I've never sold any music for personal profit despite the fact that I'm a fairly decent musician), they can choose to produce for some other reason, or choose to do something else with their free and not-free time.
The reason we have inflation in western society is that there is a gap between actual value of work and the amount being paid to certain segments. Since this gap has to be filled from somewhere, it is usually filled by devaluing the currency of the other market segments... in essence, stealing from the balanced segments to prop up the inflated segments.
Getting back to my point... the common reason a producer of intellectual goods sets, say $20 as the value they're willing to charge for a product is that that's the top value they feel they need to be enriched by that the market will bear. If the next guy over is selling a similar game for 99 cents, and so is the guy beside him, the average cost in that segment is significantly lower, and the guy charging $20 is going to find that the market won't bear the price. Propping up that price effectively skews the market segment and causes inflation -- he is in fact stealing from society at large to attempt to gain an advantage.
Society's response is to: give him the advantage (happens all the time) and let everyone else cover the discrepancy in order to enrich society with the products of his work, ignore his demands and take the product at or below market value (also happens all the time) toward the same ends, or ignore the product altogether, thus resulting in a lot of effort that a single person is hoarding from society as a whole, as they've produced a work based on those who came before them, and then given none of the results back to society to enrich it.
The
Most likely, if the Swiss can get all global content for free, they'll be more likely to spend their money saved on entertainment product produced domestically, such as local concerts and other venues. This way, the local entertainment economy is significantly boosted by legal downloading. Some spillover will even go back into the global entertainment market. See my other comments for why this model likely wouldn't work in the US.
In the US, I think that if people found they were able to get something they wanted for free, they'd be more likely to spend the money they now had available on the next item down their list of what they wanted, as the US market is driven by avarice (there's ALWAYS something else people want... often because the marketers tell them they want it). For example, this year's iGadget, a vacation to some tropical place, more ice cream and potato chips, a home theater system, a new paint job for their car, etc. All the things that they've always wanted to spend money on, but prioritize lower than their entertainment budget.
In more socialist countries like the Netherlands and Switzerland (and to some degree even the UK, Canada and Australia), people are more likely to spend how they want to spend, and supplement that with what's available for free that fits their lifestyle.
What works in some countries doesn't work in others.
The multiple layers serve a purpose: they promote the product to people who don't live their lives on the Internet.
...and so why are people who live their lives on the internet having to pay for this, exactly? The majority of people consuming this type of entertainment DO live their lives via social media these days. For those few who still listen to the radio and then go buy the music in a B&M store, wouldn't it make MORE sense to level the playing field, and prevent the radio lock-in and payola corruption we currently have in place? After all, it's that payola you're arguing to protect. You're saying that self-promotion won't work because these big labels have a racket going that's funded by the current model that prevents it.
Instead of protecting the racket, doesn't it make more sense to fix the problem?
Of course, the labels (big and indy) do more than just get your music on the airwaves... they also do strategic market integration, organise and coordinate global release schedules, bring together visual, audio, written and performing artists, etc. But they do this as a paid service. They could still offer these services to artists without requiring lock-in (you don't buy the entire package from us with this glitzy cash advance, you don't get nuthin') like they do today. This isn't acceptable in any other form of business, and in the tech industry, many companies have been taken to task for doing exactly this.
So what you're saying is that it would take someone with a sat network large enough, like China, enough intel on the protocol (which I'm sure China either has or could get -- it's not a secret) and some sort of a reason to either make the US look bad or to prove that they could accomplish such a feat through such a large expanse of space... say, like a country that is trying to prove it is the next up-and-comer in the space race.
That said, I really don't see why any such country would bother; they'd rather put a man on Mars or explore the solar system for exploitable natural resources.