A) You can't expect the first couple of tries at anti-virus-viruses to be perfect. Just because the prototypes had failings does not mean that the idea itself is not sound. Look how many thousands of regular viruses it took before the regular viruses became relatively competent.
B) Since the goal here in this article is to cripple the botnets, an anti-virus-virus that makes a system unusuable is a positive outcome. If the user can't use it, chances are the botnet can't use it either.
In many jurisdictions there are many legal problems inhibiting the use of anti-virus-viruses. But, neither teething problems nor legal problems are proof that the concept is without merit.
would it be too much to ask that you use hyphens on "as-standard-a-form-as-ASCII-is-today?" You've gotta be thinking about other people reading your english and getting confused. I personally had no idea what you were writing and had to go back and re-read it.
For the record, my only "goal" was to try to build that consensus, so you two could narrow the issue to whatever is really bugging you, so I could find out what it is.
That's easy. I've seen his type plenty. I even used to be his type before I thought things through.
He believes there is a moral basis for copyright law, that there is an inherent right of the creator to control distribution. Notice his first post in this thread was an absolutist moral argument (accusation of hypocrisy) in response to my questioning of the relative weights of the immorality of 'theft' from the content cartel versus 'theft' from the public domain. Insistence that artistic creations are not 'mere' information is also a hallmark of a copyright moralist.
I, on the other hand don't care a whit about morality, I am a pragmatist. I believe copyright exists to encourage creation as a net benefit to society - just as private ownership of real property exists to produce a net benefit to society. When digitalization made content truly non-rivalrous and the internet made it effectively non-excludable, then the opportunity costs of copyright law became greater than the net benefits. It's not that the value of the content went down, its that the value of the opportunity to share went up because the cost of sharing went to near-zero.
If you accept that content is now non-rivalrous and non-excludable, then the question returns to how do you encourage creation in a way that provides a net benefit to society? My answer is that like any other person who labours - be it ditch-diggers, office workers, even lawyers, the creator should be paid for his labour because that labour is still rivalrous and excludable, just like content was before the advent of the internet.
1. Sharing is a universal human trait. Even the worst, and most selfish, human beings, engage in sharing activities with at least some other people.
Agree, and I believe it is relevant to the discussion of the future of copyright law.
2. Stealing is an antisocial behavior which some, but not all, people engage in.
Agree, but I do not believe it is relevant to the discussion of the future of copyright law.
3. The creative process is enhanced by sharing, and impeded by stealing.
Completely agree with the first part, agree with the second part only in relation to plagiarism, where plagiarism is only non-attribution of 'significant' fragments.
4. Copyright law should encourage orderly sharing, and discourage outright stealing.
Disagree with the first part, I believe the orderly part is impossible. On the second part I agree, but only as it applies to plagiarism as above.
5. Copyright law distinguishes between raw data or information on the one hand, and creative input on the other.
Agree as the law exists today, but I believe it is irrelevant to the discussion of the problems facing creators today.
In defining what copyright law should be I would suggest that you start at one root principle and then apply the technical constraints of the modern world (not the legal constraints, since your goal seems to be to define what the law should be not what it is):
0. People who labor, should have the opportunity to profit from their labor.
I will disagree with any statement about what should be if it does not take into account the non-rivalrous and non-excludable nature of 'content.' That pretty much rules out any use of the term 'steal' and (not that you made any) just about any analogy to physical objects.
My line of questioning is a didactic approach to leading someone down the same path of reasoning that I have followed.
3. The creative process is enhanced by sharing, and impeded by stealing.
4. Copyright law should encourage orderly sharing, and discourage outright stealing.
5. Copyright law distinguishes between raw data or information on the one hand, and creative input on the other.
How do you 'steal' a non-rivalrous, non-excludable resource?
If your answer is the common definition of piracy, then I have to ask, how do you enforce such laws in a manner which does not produce a significant reduction, if not a complete net economic loss for society?
If your answer is along the lines of the same way society enforces laws against murder, I'll refer you back to the argument about natural human behaviour. If your answer is along the lines of the same way society enforces speed limits, I'll refer you to the fact that speed limit laws are unenforceable as demonstrated on all major freeways every hour of every day and enforcement is both arbitrary and ineffective at discouraging violation.
You have not proven that you can distinguish between the two, only that you think you can.
But, you are wrong - your answer demonstrated that you CAN'T distinguish between bits from "art" and bits from "information." Because if you could, you would have written an answer that would have worked.
To keep things honest, I publically recorded the correct answer immediately after posting the challenge:
You'll find http://www.rot13.com/ to be helpful in understanding the answer and how you got it wrong.
(Word to the wise - don't ever try to bluff out somebody holding the proverbial nut flush.)
Too bad you got all caught up in your own cleverness and couldn't see the forest for the trees.
Perhaps now you might want to explain how a spreadsheet is different from "a work of art?" Seeing as how you so kindly quoted my question in your last message.
Translation: you don't actually have an argument or proof to refute me, so you're calling my argument names instead.
Correction. I don't have time to educate you. I've done it enough times on slashdot with people who hold the exact same self-justifying beliefs and found them to be intractable to logic. But just so it is clear, that your post was fully of misdirection of sophistry - just what kind of bizarro world do you live in that you think citing the extinction of neaderthals is proof that humans do not naturally share knowledge?
Translation: you don't actually have a clue as to what copyright is in the first place, or what it means to be a creator, or the difference between a work of art and a spreadsheet, so you're trying to bully an idea through without proof of any sort.
Ok, tell me. Just what makes "a work of art" so much different from a spreadsheet? Is it the time and effort that went into creating it? Is it the skill of the creator and their understanding of what the spreadsheet represents? Is it the uniqueness of the spreadsheet? Is it the thoughts and insight that the spreadsheet can inspire in the minds of people who view it? Or maybe it is what the market will pay for the spreadsheet? I give up. What difference is there? Come on mr holier-than-thou-because-i-am-zee-artiste, put your cards on the table.
I'll give you $2000 via paypal if you can distinguish between digitzed "art" bits and "information" bits. Here are two sets of 32 bits in hexadecimal format, one is copied from a jpeg scan of the mona lisa, the other is copied from a gnumeric spreadsheet:
0x387A2F4F 0x24324373
If art is not information, surely you can tell the difference. I've got $2K I am ready to spend on a Panasonic AX100U projector, but I'm putting my money where my mouth is. If you aren't full of bullshit, then prove it and come and take my money.
And, finally, information is facts and figures. Created work is not information, nor has it ever been. And by suggesting that something that a creative artist worked on for weeks, months, or years, is nothing more than information is doing that artist a tremendous disservice, and extremely disrespectful.
That statement sums up your position perfectly. Everything else you posted was silly misdirection and sophistry, but this takes the cake.
Everyone who makes that kind of semantic distinction is an idiot because it demonstrates a willful ignorance of the modern world. If it can be digitized, it is information. No ifs, ands or buts.
That you don't understand this fundamental fact is all the proof in the world that you have zero qualification to pontificate on the topic of copyright. Every single issue that makes copyright controversial today is a direct result of this fact. If we were still in a world where all copyrighted materials had to be semi-permanently fixed in some sort of physical medium like a CD or a book, then piracy would be so rare that it would hardly be a topic of even academic debate much less the central issue of a PR campaign included at the start of every movie out of Hollywood.
distribution is dead and the internet killed it..." Prove it
We would not be having this conversation if it were not the case. Dinosaurs did not die over night, and neither will the distribution industry. When the entire point of the internet is to make massive distribution of information at minimum cost, the end is obvious.
1. The law is adapting and changing, and is far from anachronistic.
Prove it! Lol. Show me one bit of legislation that accepts, rather than ignores or is in conflict with, the fact that distribution is essentially zero-cost on the net.
2. It's not my job to give you everything you think you're entitled to. I'll write whatever I want to write, and it will sell however it ends up selling in the market.
You write as if the law entitles you to something. The law is not morality, and copyright law is an arbitrary restriction on inherently non-rivalrous goods.
3. I'm railing against people doing things that are pointless, or using an unrelated cause to justify their own agenda.
Who are you to judge other people's agendas? You just don't like it because it calls your entitlement into question. Seems like two sides of the same coin to me.
4. It is not human nature to share freely, and that did not get civilization started. Civilization started when hunter gatherers settled with everybody working the land. Eventually agriculture got efficient enough that people could be paid with food for services unrelated to cultivation.
Just how do you think the knowledge to make agriculture efficient was distributed? SHARING. Was the wheel patented? Was the lunar calendar copyrighted? I don't deny that people are unwilling to freely share rivalrous goods. But information is non-rivalrous and non-exclusive, making the free sharing of it natural, efficient and inevitable.
When you leave your home, you may be monitored. In the old days, it was by a plainsclothes detective popping stay-awake pills and eating doughnuts in his car parked across the street. In modern times, it is through camera surveillance and RFID.
I'm no fucking not-a-suicide-pact posner but in my opinion when the 'monitoring' goes from the guys with the donuts to the billion-dollar government contracts for systemic automated surveillance the government has already overstepped the bounds of what constitutes a reasonable search and is in violation of the 4th Amendement.
You can complain about the Mickey Mouse Act all you like, but it's still hypocrisy.
That's funny. I read your entire rant, and I did not see even a hint of a justification as to why my point is hypocritical. Absolutely zero discussion of exactly why "the mickey mouse act" was not theft.
What I did read was an amazingly ironic diatribe about the law changing as society changes so that an artist can be paid for their work.
Guess what - the law needs to change to catch up with society. The content cartel are the only ones who benefit from the anachronistic system staying in place. Rather than allow the law to really catch up with the revolutionary change in society - namely that distribution is dead and the internet killed it - they are constantly trying to stuff the genie back in the lamp, and impeding the natural progression of the law.
Instead of railing at people who are behaving naturally to file a lawsuit -- yes it is human nature to share freely, without it civilization would have never got off the ground -- why don't YOU get busy and figure out how to get paid for your hard work in a way that doesn't rely on an anachronistic, unenforceable law?
Think about what we are saying here folks. Piracy is wrong. It is at the VERY LEAST immoral.
Is it more immoral than the vast theft that was perpetuated on the public with each extension of the term of copyright? All those works were created, published and sold under the terms of copyright at that time. Yet, the MAFIAA was able to unilaterally change those terms by bribing enough people in congress.
If stealing millions, maybe even billions, of dollars worth of content from the public is not only OK, it is sanctioned by the people who should be looking out for the public's interest in the first place, then on what grounds is it immoral when members of the public do the very same thing back to the MAFIAA, except on a much, much smaller scale?
when most of us (at least 60%,) own the CDs we're downloading off the net.
Whose ass did you pull that number out of?
I rip my CDs with EAC and compress with LAME or aoTuV vorbis because that's the only way I know I'm getting good quality. So much stuff on the net is ripped in igorance. I use EncSpot to check over anything I do download and most of the time it reports sync errors and crapass encoders like Xing.
to the pedants: fine, you might be able to contrive some rube goldbergesque way to get past it, but today most most companies are getting screwed by trivial vulnerabilities. put another way, if you had an adversary that had the resources ($) and motive to craft a malformed document that was customized to be able to jump through all of the hoops needed (no overwriting system files or writing new exes), they could probably just pay off the secretary or janitor and/or physically break in and steal the info they needed:)
That's kind of a funny thing to say in the context of an article about the rise of attacks that are targetted for specific sites and even specific individuals -- where the goal is not necessarily general purpose 'infection' but instead possibly one-shot corporate espionage.
but how many people actually use sudo to execute a command as anyone but root? sudo -u nobody./random-email-attachment who does that? no-one.
Because it isn't easy.
If this were an itch I was prepared to scratch, I would look into creating a static image of a virtual-machine that could be used just for running questionable stuff. Then I would look at putting hooks into programs like thunderbird that would make it automagically invoke the VM for attachments.
Beyond the integration into regularly used applications, the main problems to overcome mainly deal with when to allow the VM to do i/o to files outside of the VM (i.e. legitimate stuff) versus when to keep all activity completely "locked up" in the VM (i.e. unexpected/undesirable behavior). Since the image is static, maybe all I/O would just be within the VM and then when the VM exits, have something compare the final state of the VM with the static image and any changes to in approved areas could be copied out, while all other changes are thrown to the window once it reverts back to the original static image.
so if someone gets snuck an evil email attachment, it would be identified by the software as new to the network and blocked at the kernel level before the OS executes it. no signatures or AV needed.
So, how do you differentiate between:
1) Joe Corporte Peon receives mail with an attachment that is an evil ms-word document with rogue macros that cause stack overflows and make ms-word process do bad things 2) Joe Corporte Peon receives mail with an attachment that is an angelic ms-word document from a customer which the company is proposing a bid to
That's because Astronomy is a national past time in North Korea. They voluntarily turn off their lights at night to prevent light pollution from interfering with their study of the heavens.;->
Not to mention a panicked, confused english speaker who just had his leg blown off by an IED.
Chances are such a victim will be in no state to even try to operate a device like this. If there are other people with him who can operate it, chances are they will be English speakers and so won't need a translator in order to communicate with him.
He must have been stoned or something, because judging by that enormous goofy grin, he is having waaay too much fun for someone who had just been arrested.
Slashdot Mirror
A) You can't expect the first couple of tries at anti-virus-viruses to be perfect. Just because the prototypes had failings does not mean that the idea itself is not sound. Look how many thousands of regular viruses it took before the regular viruses became relatively competent.
B) Since the goal here in this article is to cripple the botnets, an anti-virus-virus that makes a system unusuable is a positive outcome. If the user can't use it, chances are the botnet can't use it either.
In many jurisdictions there are many legal problems inhibiting the use of anti-virus-viruses. But, neither teething problems nor legal problems are proof that the concept is without merit.
Yes. Yes-it-would-be too-much-to-ask.
For the record, my only "goal" was to try to build that consensus, so you two could narrow the issue to whatever is really bugging you, so I could find out what it is.
That's easy. I've seen his type plenty. I even used to be his type before I thought things through.
He believes there is a moral basis for copyright law, that there is an inherent right of the creator to control distribution. Notice his first post in this thread was an absolutist moral argument (accusation of hypocrisy) in response to my questioning of the relative weights of the immorality of 'theft' from the content cartel versus 'theft' from the public domain. Insistence that artistic creations are not 'mere' information is also a hallmark of a copyright moralist.
I, on the other hand don't care a whit about morality, I am a pragmatist. I believe copyright exists to encourage creation as a net benefit to society - just as private ownership of real property exists to produce a net benefit to society. When digitalization made content truly non-rivalrous and the internet made it effectively non-excludable, then the opportunity costs of copyright law became greater than the net benefits. It's not that the value of the content went down, its that the value of the opportunity to share went up because the cost of sharing went to near-zero.
If you accept that content is now non-rivalrous and non-excludable, then the question returns to how do you encourage creation in a way that provides a net benefit to society? My answer is that like any other person who labours - be it ditch-diggers, office workers, even lawyers, the creator should be paid for his labour because that labour is still rivalrous and excludable, just like content was before the advent of the internet.
1. Sharing is a universal human trait. Even the worst, and most selfish, human beings, engage in sharing activities with at least some other people.
Agree, and I believe it is relevant to the discussion of the future of copyright law.
2. Stealing is an antisocial behavior which some, but not all, people engage in.
Agree, but I do not believe it is relevant to the discussion of the future of copyright law.
3. The creative process is enhanced by sharing, and impeded by stealing.
Completely agree with the first part, agree with the second part only in relation to plagiarism, where plagiarism is only non-attribution of 'significant' fragments.
4. Copyright law should encourage orderly sharing, and discourage outright stealing.
Disagree with the first part, I believe the orderly part is impossible. On the second part I agree, but only as it applies to plagiarism as above.
5. Copyright law distinguishes between raw data or information on the one hand, and creative input on the other.
Agree as the law exists today, but I believe it is irrelevant to the discussion of the problems facing creators today.
In defining what copyright law should be I would suggest that you start at one root principle and then apply the technical constraints of the modern world (not the legal constraints, since your goal seems to be to define what the law should be not what it is):
0. People who labor, should have the opportunity to profit from their labor.
I will disagree with any statement about what should be if it does not take into account the non-rivalrous and non-excludable nature of 'content.' That pretty much rules out any use of the term 'steal' and (not that you made any) just about any analogy to physical objects.
My line of questioning is a didactic approach to leading someone down the same path of reasoning that I have followed.
3. The creative process is enhanced by sharing, and impeded by stealing.
4. Copyright law should encourage orderly sharing, and discourage outright stealing.
5. Copyright law distinguishes between raw data or information on the one hand, and creative input on the other.
How do you 'steal' a non-rivalrous, non-excludable resource?
If your answer is the common definition of piracy, then I have to ask, how do you enforce such laws in a manner which does not produce a significant reduction, if not a complete net economic loss for society?
If your answer is along the lines of the same way society enforces laws against murder, I'll refer you back to the argument about natural human behaviour. If your answer is along the lines of the same way society enforces speed limits, I'll refer you to the fact that speed limit laws are unenforceable as demonstrated on all major freeways every hour of every day and enforcement is both arbitrary and ineffective at discouraging violation.
You have not proven that you can distinguish between the two, only that you think you can.
4 47659
But, you are wrong - your answer demonstrated that you CAN'T distinguish between bits from "art" and bits from "information." Because if you could, you would have written an answer that would have worked.
To keep things honest, I publically recorded the correct answer immediately after posting the challenge:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=200217&cid=16
You'll find http://www.rot13.com/ to be helpful in understanding the answer and how you got it wrong.
(Word to the wise - don't ever try to bluff out somebody holding the proverbial nut flush.)
Too bad you got all caught up in your own cleverness and couldn't see the forest for the trees.
Perhaps now you might want to explain how a spreadsheet is different from "a work of art?" Seeing as how you so kindly quoted my question in your last message.
Maybe you have bigger plans for the money? Anousheh isn't the only one spending buyout dollars on modern philanthropy.
Gur nafjre vf gung arvgure frg bs ovgf vf sebz n fpna bs gur zban yvfn obgu ner sebz gur fnzr fcernqfurrg
Translation: you don't actually have an argument or proof to refute me, so you're calling my argument names instead.
Correction. I don't have time to educate you. I've done it enough times on slashdot with people who hold the exact same self-justifying beliefs and found them to be intractable to logic. But just so it is clear, that your post was fully of misdirection of sophistry - just what kind of bizarro world do you live in that you think citing the extinction of neaderthals is proof that humans do not naturally share knowledge?
Translation: you don't actually have a clue as to what copyright is in the first place, or what it means to be a creator, or the difference between a work of art and a spreadsheet, so you're trying to bully an idea through without proof of any sort.
Ok, tell me. Just what makes "a work of art" so much different from a spreadsheet? Is it the time and effort that went into creating it? Is it the skill of the creator and their understanding of what the spreadsheet represents? Is it the uniqueness of the spreadsheet? Is it the thoughts and insight that the spreadsheet can inspire in the minds of people who view it? Or maybe it is what the market will pay for the spreadsheet? I give up. What difference is there? Come on mr holier-than-thou-because-i-am-zee-artiste, put your cards on the table.
I'll give you $2000 via paypal if you can distinguish between digitzed "art" bits and "information" bits. Here are two sets of 32 bits in hexadecimal format, one is copied from a jpeg scan of the mona lisa, the other is copied from a gnumeric spreadsheet:
0x387A2F4F 0x24324373
If art is not information, surely you can tell the difference. I've got $2K I am ready to spend on a Panasonic AX100U projector, but I'm putting my money where my mouth is. If you aren't full of bullshit, then prove it and come and take my money.
And, finally, information is facts and figures. Created work is not information, nor has it ever been. And by suggesting that something that a creative artist worked on for weeks, months, or years, is nothing more than information is doing that artist a tremendous disservice, and extremely disrespectful.
That statement sums up your position perfectly. Everything else you posted was silly misdirection and sophistry, but this takes the cake.
Everyone who makes that kind of semantic distinction is an idiot because it demonstrates a willful ignorance of the modern world. If it can be digitized, it is information. No ifs, ands or buts.
That you don't understand this fundamental fact is all the proof in the world that you have zero qualification to pontificate on the topic of copyright. Every single issue that makes copyright controversial today is a direct result of this fact. If we were still in a world where all copyrighted materials had to be semi-permanently fixed in some sort of physical medium like a CD or a book, then piracy would be so rare that it would hardly be a topic of even academic debate much less the central issue of a PR campaign included at the start of every movie out of Hollywood.
We would not be having this conversation if it were not the case. Dinosaurs did not die over night, and neither will the distribution industry. When the entire point of the internet is to make massive distribution of information at minimum cost, the end is obvious.
1. The law is adapting and changing, and is far from anachronistic.
Prove it! Lol. Show me one bit of legislation that accepts, rather than ignores or is in conflict with, the fact that distribution is essentially zero-cost on the net.
2. It's not my job to give you everything you think you're entitled to. I'll write whatever I want to write, and it will sell however it ends up selling in the market.
You write as if the law entitles you to something. The law is not morality, and copyright law is an arbitrary restriction on inherently non-rivalrous goods.
3. I'm railing against people doing things that are pointless, or using an unrelated cause to justify their own agenda.
Who are you to judge other people's agendas? You just don't like it because it calls your entitlement into question. Seems like two sides of the same coin to me.
4. It is not human nature to share freely, and that did not get civilization started. Civilization started when hunter gatherers settled with everybody working the land. Eventually agriculture got efficient enough that people could be paid with food for services unrelated to cultivation.
Just how do you think the knowledge to make agriculture efficient was distributed? SHARING. Was the wheel patented? Was the lunar calendar copyrighted? I don't deny that people are unwilling to freely share rivalrous goods. But information is non-rivalrous and non-exclusive, making the free sharing of it natural, efficient and inevitable.
Great.
So, tell me. Exactly what does your point have to do with the original claim that 60% of the downloads are of music people already own the CD for?
Imagine Firefox asking you if you would like to remember the password when you are looking at an "Incorrect Password" screen. What is more annoying?
Speaking from experience, actually having firefox remember incorrect passwords is about as bad as it can get.
When you leave your home, you may be monitored. In the old days, it was by a plainsclothes detective popping stay-awake pills and eating doughnuts in his car parked across the street. In modern times, it is through camera surveillance and RFID.
I'm no fucking not-a-suicide-pact posner but in my opinion when the 'monitoring' goes from the guys with the donuts to the billion-dollar government contracts for systemic automated surveillance the government has already overstepped the bounds of what constitutes a reasonable search and is in violation of the 4th Amendement.
That's funny. I read your entire rant, and I did not see even a hint of a justification as to why my point is hypocritical. Absolutely zero discussion of exactly why "the mickey mouse act" was not theft.
What I did read was an amazingly ironic diatribe about the law changing as society changes so that an artist can be paid for their work.
Guess what - the law needs to change to catch up with society. The content cartel are the only ones who benefit from the anachronistic system staying in place. Rather than allow the law to really catch up with the revolutionary change in society - namely that distribution is dead and the internet killed it - they are constantly trying to stuff the genie back in the lamp, and impeding the natural progression of the law.
Instead of railing at people who are behaving naturally to file a lawsuit -- yes it is human nature to share freely, without it civilization would have never got off the ground -- why don't YOU get busy and figure out how to get paid for your hard work in a way that doesn't rely on an anachronistic, unenforceable law?
Think about what we are saying here folks. Piracy is wrong. It is at the VERY LEAST immoral.
Is it more immoral than the vast theft that was perpetuated on the public with each extension of the term of copyright? All those works were created, published and sold under the terms of copyright at that time. Yet, the MAFIAA was able to unilaterally change those terms by bribing enough people in congress.
If stealing millions, maybe even billions, of dollars worth of content from the public is not only OK, it is sanctioned by the people who should be looking out for the public's interest in the first place, then on what grounds is it immoral when members of the public do the very same thing back to the MAFIAA, except on a much, much smaller scale?
when most of us (at least 60%,) own the CDs we're downloading off the net.
Whose ass did you pull that number out of?
I rip my CDs with EAC and compress with LAME or aoTuV vorbis because that's the only way I know I'm getting good quality. So much stuff on the net is ripped in igorance. I use EncSpot to check over anything I do download and most of the time it reports sync errors and crapass encoders like Xing.
to the pedants: fine, you might be able to contrive some rube goldbergesque way to get past it, but today most most companies are getting screwed by trivial vulnerabilities. put another way, if you had an adversary that had the resources ($) and motive to craft a malformed document that was customized to be able to jump through all of the hoops needed (no overwriting system files or writing new exes), they could probably just pay off the secretary or janitor and/or physically break in and steal the info they needed :)
That's kind of a funny thing to say in the context of an article about the rise of attacks that are targetted for specific sites and even specific individuals -- where the goal is not necessarily general purpose 'infection' but instead possibly one-shot corporate espionage.
but how many people actually use sudo to execute a command as anyone but root? sudo -u nobody ./random-email-attachment who does that? no-one.
Because it isn't easy.
If this were an itch I was prepared to scratch, I would look into creating a static image of a virtual-machine that could be used just for running questionable stuff. Then I would look at putting hooks into programs like thunderbird that would make it automagically invoke the VM for attachments.
Beyond the integration into regularly used applications, the main problems to overcome mainly deal with when to allow the VM to do i/o to files outside of the VM (i.e. legitimate stuff) versus when to keep all activity completely "locked up" in the VM (i.e. unexpected/undesirable behavior). Since the image is static, maybe all I/O would just be within the VM and then when the VM exits, have something compare the final state of the VM with the static image and any changes to in approved areas could be copied out, while all other changes are thrown to the window once it reverts back to the original static image.
So, how do you differentiate between:
1) Joe Corporte Peon receives mail with an attachment that is an evil ms-word document with rogue macros that cause stack overflows and make ms-word process do bad things
2) Joe Corporte Peon receives mail with an attachment that is an angelic ms-word document from a customer which the company is proposing a bid to
?
That's because Astronomy is a national past time in North Korea. They voluntarily turn off their lights at night to prevent light pollution from interfering with their study of the heavens. ;->
Not to mention a panicked, confused english speaker who just had his leg blown off by an IED.
Chances are such a victim will be in no state to even try to operate a device like this. If there are other people with him who can operate it, chances are they will be English speakers and so won't need a translator in order to communicate with him.
He must have been stoned or something, because judging by that enormous goofy grin, he is having waaay too much fun for someone who had just been arrested.