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US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for us to deploy rootkits, spywa

Re: US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for us to deploy rootkits,

It sounds like you have stumbled on to a wonderful business opportunity. I hope it makes you fabulously wealthy and nobody steals it from you.

Heh... how can you lose a opportunity to go into a venture... after you've already gone into that venture, and taken that opportunity?
 
Re: US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for us to deploy rootkits,

Another insanely stupid RIAA/MPAA move. Do this and their business is gone, what remains of their physical media market will be forever lost to NetFlix, Hulu and the MP3 online providers. What makes it beyond the realm of reason is the simple reality that most pirates/cappers do not buy DVDs (other than the blanks) - they don't need to. The ones that do, do so later on to support the artists, and that would come to an abrupt halt.
 
Re: US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for us to deploy rootkits,

Poor Pete, some companies don't want to do business in his area so he condones theft rather than looking at why a company would not want to do business in his area. Let's see if I have this correct: They have it, I want it, they're stupid. I wouldn't rule that out as a possibility, but why would they not want to sell to your area? Could it be that they don't agree with the regulation in your marketplace?

You say that rights holders are bringing piracy upon themselves. They could eliminate piracy completely if they just put out their content for free in geographically distributed data centers. That's the logical extension of your argument.

Here is an alternative point of view: Content owners either can't or won't abide by local regulation to sell legitimately in your area, but these same government entities are obligated to enforce copyright laws and don't so you can freely pirate whatever you want to have. So you say you want to be honest but just can't because THEY are morons. At least you are honest in your law breaking.

As I indicated, I don't agree with all the tactics that the entertainment industry uses, but I understand why they try.

I'm an American in europe, and I pirate a LOT. Mostly because I have zero access to American media of any kind here. As Pete pointed out, if I were in the states, I could watch all of these things for free online. Most shows I couldn't watch even if I wanted to pay for it. For instance, Parks and Recreation, one of my favorite shows, I could never watch legally.

I can't pay for it online, and I can't order it from the states, because DVD region protection would prevent me from doing so. I tried signing up for a legal, paid online streaming service, but all the movies and shows were from a decade ago, because the companies want to ****-block. We're telling them 'PLEASE TAKE OUR MONEY' and they refuse.

I don't feel the slightest bit bad for watching something that every other American gets to watch for free when I couldn't pay enough money to get it legally. How are they losing money if I can't buy it in the first place? It's a no-lose scenario.
 
Re: US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for us to deploy rootkits,

I'm an American in europe, and I pirate a LOT. Mostly because I have zero access to American media of any kind here. As Pete pointed out, if I were in the states, I could watch all of these things for free online. Most shows I couldn't watch even if I wanted to pay for it. For instance, Parks and Recreation, one of my favorite shows, I could never watch legally.

I can't pay for it online, and I can't order it from the states, because DVD region protection would prevent me from doing so. I tried signing up for a legal, paid online streaming service, but all the movies and shows were from a decade ago, because the companies want to ****-block. We're telling them 'PLEASE TAKE OUR MONEY' and they refuse.

I don't feel the slightest bit bad for watching something that every other American gets to watch for free when I couldn't pay enough money to get it legally. How are they losing money if I can't buy it in the first place? It's a no-lose scenario.

Have you tried using a proxy server in the US? Not that Netflix actually has anything new or a great selection. Hulu and Netflix try to require windows and Amazon streaming is expensive (and has been moving towards silverlight) and their "premium" service basically only has old stuff. I haven't tried Hulu on Wine, maybe it would work.

Frankly, if they want to force me to use Windows or even Mac to get anything, then screw them, there are ways to get it anyway. If they want to not support Linux or the content producers want it only distributed by those who don't support Linux or anything other than Mac and Windows, then screw'em, I can get the content if I want it.

Even their proposed stupidity wouldn't directly affect me because it is almost impossible to even build such malware/spyware/ransomware that would work on Linux in general. I say almost impossible because while it is possible, it would only affect those whose set up matches what they build it for, but since Linux is a unique compile on each system, it is very rare for two systems to be identical and even then, ransomware wouldn't work unless they actually found a way to bypass the root access restrictions native to Linux/Unix and other such systems.

Maybe instead of stupid and ultimately futile schemes, they should try giving greater legal access to larger numbers of people, thus reducing the need for some to bypass existing systems.
 
Re: US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for us to deploy rootkits,

i don't pirate anything. that being said, i'm exceptionally unlikely to purchase anything which contains rootkits or ransomware. i work actively to keep my machines free of that kind of nonsense, and will continue to do so.
 
Re: US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for us to deploy rootkits,

Have you tried using a proxy server in the US? Not that Netflix actually has anything new or a great selection. Hulu and Netflix try to require windows and Amazon streaming is expensive (and has been moving towards silverlight) and their "premium" service basically only has old stuff. I haven't tried Hulu on Wine, maybe it would work.

Frankly, if they want to force me to use Windows or even Mac to get anything, then screw them, there are ways to get it anyway. If they want to not support Linux or the content producers want it only distributed by those who don't support Linux or anything other than Mac and Windows, then screw'em, I can get the content if I want it.

Even their proposed stupidity wouldn't directly affect me because it is almost impossible to even build such malware/spyware/ransomware that would work on Linux in general. I say almost impossible because while it is possible, it would only affect those whose set up matches what they build it for, but since Linux is a unique compile on each system, it is very rare for two systems to be identical and even then, ransomware wouldn't work unless they actually found a way to bypass the root access restrictions native to Linux/Unix and other such systems.

Maybe instead of stupid and ultimately futile schemes, they should try giving greater legal access to larger numbers of people, thus reducing the need for some to bypass existing systems.

Proxies won't generally work. The sites can usually detect you're through a proxy, and will block you. Even if they didn't, the bandwidth through a proxy you're not paying for is almost never enough for videos.

I don't really care, I can stream anything I want free right now. When they're ready to offer me a comparable legal service, I'll pay for it.
 
Re: US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for us to deploy rootkits, s

I am not sure how reliable this source is.But if its true I wonder how they are going to get that stuff into already released stuff?



US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for us to deploy rootkits, spyware, ransomware and trojans to attack pirates! - Boing Boing

The hilariously named "Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property" has finally released its report, an 84-page tome that's pretty bonkers. But amidst all that crazy, there's a bit that stands out as particularly insane: a proposal to legalize the use of malware in order to punish people believed to be copying illegally. The report proposes that software would be loaded on computers that would somehow figure out if you were a pirate, and if you were, it would lock your computer up and take all your files hostage until you call the police and confess your crime. This is the mechanism that crooks use when they deploy ransomware. It's just more evidence that copyright enforcers' network strategies are indistinguishable from those used by dictators and criminals. In 2011, the MPAA told Congress that they wanted SOPA and knew it would work because it was the same tactic used by governments in "China, Iran, the UAE, Armenia, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain, Burma, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam." Now they've demanded that Congress legalize an extortion tool invented by organized criminals.

What the “Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property” is asking for is an authority which government itself does not have, and therefore cannot legitimately delegate to anyone else. It's rather like someone asking me for permission to burgle my neighbor's home. I don't have any authority myself to burgle my neighbor's home, therefore, I cannot legitimately give anyone else permission to do so either.
 
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