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Newly discovered Vigilante malware outs software pirates and blocks them

arstechnica.com

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Re: Newly discovered Vigilante malware outs software pirates and blocks them

#61

Post by bserge »

andrewzah wrote: post #47
bserge wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IP is incredibly important and we must all protect it at all cost. My wage and health are nothing compared to the employers' properties and wealth. I would die for them.

Then don't buy media. But don't pirate it either. Media takes money and lots of man-hours of people working in order to produce things. They, too, need to get paid, regardless of whatever principles you hold personally. edit: kindly stop shadow-editing comments. Your comment is completely different now from the one that I replied to.

Indeed, the media companies deserve their money. The artists should be grateful for the opportunity to become famous even if they don't make that much money and we should all pay to see the same Marvel movie rewritten 10 times. Nothing better exists in this world.

Re: Newly discovered Vigilante malware outs software pirates and blocks them

#62

Post by andrewzah »

pftburger wrote: post #44
chucka9 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saving money is not the only reason to pirate content. Some things aren’t available in my region and never will be (as they are 20+ years old). Some things are presented via a crap app, in dubious formats or with truely horrible DRM. I pirate plenty of shows that I have legal access to or own.

The way I see it piracy is mostly a UX problem. Often the UX of pirating a thing is easier than legally acquiring it. Maybe not true for AAA games, but def true for most movies/series. If your outside of the US, often a lot of content isn’t even available because of shitty geo licensing

> If your outside of the US, often a lot of content isn’t even available because of shitty geo licensing

This is one case where I understand people pirating. I watch some shows from other countries that simply are not published in the US or aren't for sale at all. And sometimes if they are available, certain elements are changed due to copyright reasons so it's not exactly the same.

Another reason would be horrible DRM. Again, I wouldn't recommend pirating based on that, but I do understand it. Pirated content doesn't have DRM dictating when, where, or what time(s) I can view the damn thing I paid money for. I also find it fine if someone buys a DRM-locked product, then pirates the same thing to avoid dealing with the DRM.

Re: Newly discovered Vigilante malware outs software pirates and blocks them

#63

Post by bserge »

slim wrote: post #60
andrewzah wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then don't buy media. But don't pirate it either. Media takes money and lots of man-hours of people working in order to produce things. They, too, need to get paid, regardless of whatever principles you hold personally. edit: kindly stop shadow-editing comments. Your comment is completely different now from the one that I replied to.

It seems this person will be happy if the whole entertainement industry disappeared

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

Re: Newly discovered Vigilante malware outs software pirates and blocks them

#64

Post by andrewzah »

bserge wrote: post #61
andrewzah wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then don't buy media. But don't pirate it either. Media takes money and lots of man-hours of people working in order to produce things. They, too, need to get paid, regardless of whatever principles you hold personally. edit: kindly stop shadow-editing comments. Your comment is completely different now from the one that I replied to.

Indeed, the media companies deserve their money. The artists should be grateful for the opportunity to become famous even if they don't make that much money and we should all pay to see the same Marvel movie rewritten 10 times. Nothing better exists in this world.

That is not what I was discussing at all.

You can justify it to yourself however you want, but normal people, like you and I, work on movies, books, games, etc. Like us, they also need to get paid. It is entitlement to not want to pay for their work yet still consume it, and it's also dismissive of the huge amount of work that actually goes into the production of media.

edit: kindly stop completely changing your comments with shadow-edits.

Re: Newly discovered Vigilante malware outs software pirates and blocks them

#65

Post by andrewzah »

bserge wrote: post #38

I am against piracy on principle. All of my employers know how hard I work to protect their IP.

Note: the original comment was akin to "I refuse to pay for media on principle". bserge has shadow-edited several comments in this chain from what they were originally.

Re: Newly discovered Vigilante malware outs software pirates and blocks them

#66

Post by rozab »

azinman2 wrote: post #18
rozab wrote: post #9

>Padding it out with racist slurs told me all I needed to know about its creator. Clearly that is the intent. These companies have no shame. Remember Sony's response to their rootkit being discovered? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_roo...

I’m not seeing the connection between Sony and racial slurs. In fact, especially without knowing what racial slur this is, it tells me very little about the creators intent.

The point is Sony continued to deny the existence of the rootkit for years, despite overwhelming evidence. If this malware was commissioned by the MPAA or something, I think they would have no issue with telling whatever morally dubious firm they hired to make it look like it came from stereotypical hacker types. They know that security blogs love to make conclusions on the origins of malware based on strings that could be trivially obscured.

Re: Newly discovered Vigilante malware outs software pirates and blocks them

#67

Post by perihelions »

cortesoft wrote: post #39
chucka9 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These companies have no shame. Do you think this was backed by companies? It seems reasonable to suspect it, but it’s a issue radioactive now so won’t be easy to find out.

If it was backed by companies, it would probably be funded by a 'trade group' funded by the companies, to have three layers of indirection to protect themselves.

The fraud on the FCC's public comment process is an object lesson. The fraud itself (fake FCC comments under false and stolen identities) was committed by social media consultants with names like "Fluent"*, "Opt-Intelligence", and "React2Media". They were in turn hired by the trade group "Broadband for America", with contractual language that keeps BfA at arms length from the crimes. BfA in turn is a separate entity from the large ISP's that fund and direct it -- the biggest ones being Comcast, Charter, and AT&T. Two levels of indirection.

*(Unrelated to the CFD software, obviously)

This was the stuff the New York AG investigation unraveled:

https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-...

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/biggest-isps-pai...

(From Ars: "With broadband companies having used third-party vendors to conduct the campaign, the AG said it found no evidence that ISPs themselves "had direct knowledge" of the fraudulent behavior.")

Re: Newly discovered Vigilante malware outs software pirates and blocks them

#68

Post by stordoff »

andrewzah wrote: post #51
underseacables wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adobe products are really the only software I advocate pirating. There’s a lot of great software out there and we should pay for it, but some companies have just turned to greed and screwing over customers.

There are cheaper alternatives, such as Affinity Designer, Sketch, etc, depending on your use case. As others have mentioned, even if you pirate adobe, by using their products you reinforce the influence adobe has. Now as far as I know, there aren't any -good- film editing alternatives that are free. I have tried a fair few open source alternatives and they are pitiful compared to adobe premiere. So while I can't rec…

> there aren't any -good- film editing alternatives that are free

I've only used it for fairly basic work, but DaVinci Resolve[1] seems pretty good. Not open source, but the free version is licenced for commercial use and AFAICT it seems to have a fairly complete feature set. I suspect it would be sufficient for many use cases.

[1] https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/uk/products/davinciresolve/...

Re: Newly discovered Vigilante malware outs software pirates and blocks them

#70

Post by na85 »

chucka9 wrote: post #26
rozab wrote: post #9

>Padding it out with racist slurs told me all I needed to know about its creator. Clearly that is the intent. These companies have no shame. Remember Sony's response to their rootkit being discovered? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_roo...

> These companies have no shame. Do you think this was backed by companies? It seems reasonable to suspect it, but it’s a issue radioactive now so won’t be easy to find out.

>Do you think this was backed by companies?

Frankly I'd be shocked if it wasn't.

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