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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

#101

Post by js8 »

I think pirating is like cheating in relationships. The society should discourage it, but to criminalize it is much worse than just to let it happen. Yes, the solution is possibly not stable or consistent, yet adhering to either side of consistent moral principles is arguably worse.

Many people do both, sometimes in a weird, selective way. I know I do, I pirate a lot, yet if I really care about something (or it's harder to obtain, which is kind of equalizing authors' profits), I will buy it.

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

#102

Post by asddubs »

serf wrote: post #94
marcosdumay wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are all kinds of crazy people out there. There could easily be somebody with a burning desire to fight IP piracy.

>There could easily be somebody with a burning desire to fight IP piracy. It could be some kind of Robinhood vigilante figure, but that's a hard sell for me given the already-known abusive history and tactics of the game industry. Here's another hard sell : it's the TPB people releasing it in an effort to reduce their hosting costs. (It's not, but since we're throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks, why no…

>Many of these video game groups write root-kit style DRM mechanisms for a living; given the (shady) history & experience at the task, it's not a far leap to assume that one of these groups would irresponsibly combine the efforts, if given enough legal ambiguity and a long enough paper-trail to make legal harassment separated from the major group.

from the sound of the article, the malware sounds extremely unsophisticated, though. It edits your hostname, sends your ip and what you downloaded to some php script, and that's it. it doesn't even persistently install itself in any way. Basically anyone could put something like this together without much skill required. Not even disputing this wouldn't come from some sort of ip-based adjacent company, but I doubt it would be written by the same people who write DRM software

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

#103

Post by okwubodu »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #98
privacyking wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Piracy isn't hard on iOS devices though. You don't even need to root/jailbreak.

Ah... it doesn't allow installing apps outside of the App Store. If I named an app that is paid on the App Store, you will find it nearly impossible to run it on an iOS device without a jailbreak... or even with a jailbreak. Also "root" is Android terminology.

> you will find it nearly impossible to run it on an iOS device without a jailbreak

Unless I'm missing something it would be trivial.

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

#104

Post by andrewzah »

retrac wrote: post #71
andrewzah wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then don't buy it. Right now, I can't afford to buy a classic '60s gibson guitar. That doesn't give me the license to go out and steal one, -because I want one-. If modern AAA games are too much at $80, then don't buy them. There are significantly cheaper alternatives on PC, as well as the possibility of waiting for deals or buying used. High prices don't justify pirating.

A better analogy would be making yourself an exact duplicate of a Gibson guitar, at home with a 3D printer. I'm not sure that should be illegal, at least if you take the trademark off it.

Yeah, it wasn't a very good analogy. It's hard to compare duplication like this to real world things like theft.

Regardless, merely desiring something is not a justification to pirate things.

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

#105

Post by Dylan16807 »

bscphil wrote: post #48
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.

Just the other day, I was talking about the difficulty of monetizing an app I wanted to build with my partner. We agreed that the app had an extremely small target audience - university types for whom the app would provide hundreds of dollars of value a year (paid out of their grants, not their salary). The problem is that absolutely no one pays >= $100 for a phone app. Adobe was in the same situation years ago. It p…

You think nickel and diming people causes less ill will from ordinary people than a high price that nobody expects you to pay?

> The only people this pisses off are a handful of hardcore users who expect to "own" all the software they use

Also the people that want to be able to access their files forever. Not only when people chose to stop paying, Adobe won't even let people pay for some of the old versions of their subscription software. Hope it imports into the new version correctly!

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

#106

Post by andrewzah »

AlexandrB wrote: post #83
andrewzah wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize that actual people work on those things that you pirate, right? That those people also need to get paid so they can have food on the table? It's one thing to not buy any media at all, but it's contradictory to enjoy media produced by people and then not want to pay them. Their work isn't less valuable because it's related to media production instead of engineering or whatever.

The problem with this argument is that most large studios treat their workforce like trash. Any surplus profit they make is going to the executives and shareholders. The developers will be used up and discarded regardless. It's also funny that you're upset about the guy pirating software (lifetime economic impact in 10s of thousands of dollars) but not the games publishers themselves who regularly dodge taxes - in so…

"most large studios treat their workforce like trash ... It's also funny that you're upset about the guy pirating software ... but not the games publishers themselves who regularly dodge taxes"

Where did I say I support publishers not paying their taxes or treating employees unfairly? Those are separate issues completely unrelated to the one we're discussing. (Obviously, I think everyone should pay taxes fairly and treat their employees fairly.)

Company A doing bad thing B does not mean we morally justify crime C. Either pay for the thing you -want, not need-, or don't if you don't support various actions or stances from the company. This also is based on the premise that all media comes from bad corporations, which is not true. Many artists these days can be supported directly, self publish, etc.

Also, I'm not "upset", nor am I looking at one singular individual. I am looking at this from a societal and long-term perspective of the long-term effects of people pirating media.

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

#107

Post by andrewzah »

PufPufPuf wrote: post #84
andrewzah wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then don't buy it. Right now, I can't afford to buy a classic '60s gibson guitar. That doesn't give me the license to go out and steal one, -because I want one-. If modern AAA games are too much at $80, then don't buy them. There are significantly cheaper alternatives on PC, as well as the possibility of waiting for deals or buying used. High prices don't justify pirating.

It the people truly can't afford the games (and wouldn't buy them at all if they didn't have the option to pirate), is there really any harm from their piracy? Steam has it mostly figured out, though. Look at SteamDB at international prices and you'll discover that prices in Brazil or Russia are often a fraction of the US/EU price. Turns out selling the game for dirt cheap makes more money than not selling it.

"It the people truly can't afford the games (and wouldn't buy them at all if they didn't have the option to pirate), is there really any harm from their piracy?"

I would say it's still unethical and wrong, regardless if we can't point to a specific entity being hurt. It is entitlement to want something for free when one can't afford it. There are -so- many games nowadays, and many of them are not even close to $60. And as mentioned, steam is generally aware of regional currency discrepancies.

And I would argue accepting or condoning pro-piracy attitudes is harmful in the long run versus accepting that one can't just take things that one wants, and paying for things when able.

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

#108

Post by andrewzah »

Zababa wrote: post #95
andrewzah wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you've quoted, because that is -not- what I said. People should be paid for their work. Pirating doesn't pay them for their work. Work includes art and media. I'm not sure how I can state this more simply. I'm not sure why this is even a complicated topic. With literally everything else, if you want something, you need to pay to acquire it because it took time and resources to make. That doesn't go…

> With literally everything else, if you want something, you need to pay to acquire it because it took time and resources to make. That doesn't go away just because the end product is digital. The thing is that making a copy of something digital is really really cheap compared to something physical. The difference between the cost of producing one copy of a software or music and a million is way lower than for a phys…

I agree that it's not a great analogy. However, the fact that copying technically has a "zero" cost, doesn't mean that we can just ignore the time, money, and effort spent by the people making that media. It's not literal theft but it does hurt the artists/creators in the long run.

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

#109

Post by bserge »

andrewzah wrote: post #64
bserge wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 comm…

My apologies, I shouldn't have started that discussion in the first place. Losing grip on emotions is terrible.

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

#110

Post by hyperman1 »

zamadatix wrote: post #86
hyperman1 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pirating Adobe tools = training people in their usage. Their job will then pay for Adobe, as they already know it. If you want to hurt Adobe, advocate not pirating them and point users to alternatives

Most people aren't interested in enacting karmic justice when they pirate Adobe software for personal reasons they just want to have access to the best in class software while avoiding the relatively high cost for something that isn't generating their paycheck at the time.

Correct. Piracy results in a market dynamic where even a strong second player can't win from the market leader, and pushes software markets to monopolies.

Companies like MS and Adobe know this. They have to perform regular anti pitacy charades, but they vastly prefer someone pirating -a potential future buy- to someone buying an alternative - an actual lost sale.

Same dynamic in hollywood: Pirating a film is vastly better for them than finding alternative hobbies and not buying the series merchandise.

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