I did a similar thing almost 20 years ago. The Swedish National Pensioners' Organisation was hotlinking an image from my server. I can't really remember exactly what it was, but it was something harmless, like a picture of a cat. Teenage me thought it was super fun to change this image to something more explicit.
Using Goatse to Stop App Theft
251–260 of 464 posts
Re: Using Goatse to Stop App Theft
#252I run three word games, this stuff happens for all of them. It sucks but I would never do what they did, it's abusive to the people who just googled your game and ended up on the wrong site. I've had teachers and students reach out to me to say they play my game in class every day together. And parents who play with their kids every day, and adult who text their results to each other every day. It sucks if they end u…
The abuser here is Google.
Definitely feels like a "report this website to google" button would be fantastic, if there was a way to automate/simplify such a thing for 1-3 clicks.
Re: Using Goatse to Stop App Theft
#253Ah, I had a similar idea. There were too many bots or vulnerability scanners hitting /wp-admin.php on my blog. It was flooding my access logs with 404s because I don't rock wordpress. Irksome stuff. So I threw up a little 'surprise' for the ahem penetration testers ahem , if you feel brave: https://www.thran.uk/wp-login.php
> There were too many bots or vulnerability scanners hitting /wp-admin.php on my blog There are moments I'm about to deploy something similar and by now what's stopping me are laziness and other higher priorities. I'm staring at these aggravating items in server log and maybe someday.
if you filter out requests that don't have a host defined that clears up pretty much all of those requests
Re: Using Goatse to Stop App Theft
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have a link to such a case? Genuinely asking because I want to know how the lawyers argue this in court without bursting into giggles from embarrassment.
Sure: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna34483145
I remember this case. I also remember that he appealed and won: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna36239042
Re: Using Goatse to Stop App Theft
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
+1 - this is a childish move and bad business imo. I'd guess the author is pretty young.
Life is a meaningless crawl towards the heat death of the universe. Childish behavior is the most appropriate attitude one can have towards most things.
I totally agree with you, and there are definitely more whimsical ways to go about it than goatse. Even if I personally can find whimsy in getting randomly goatse'd I'm not gonna say that someone who finds it really disturbing deserves what's coming to them just because they are insufficiently chill.
Re: Using Goatse to Stop App Theft
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
And, especially in the context where the same result could have been achieved as easily without resorting to law-breaking, how does that constitute a license to break other laws?
If one element of the law that you are claiming that he broke is intent to cause distress and he didn’t have that intent, the elements of the crime were not present. This is not debatable as a matter of law; the only question of fact would be “what was the intent?”
Have... have you ever seen Goatse? (If you haven't, please don't look it up just for sake of this and take my word for it)
It's the reference example for what a "shock image" is. How in the blazes is the choice of that particular image over practically anything else based on anything but its capacity at causing distress?
The blog post both acknowledges it as such, and even says "Let this be a lesson to you", making it clear that its use is specifically meant to be go beyond stopping people and actively punish them. And even if it weren't for that straight up confession, it'd STILL be patently obvious that this is what they are doing. We are in clear-cut "shotgun booby trap" territory here. As others have pointed out, there are subtleties at play over who is ultimately responsible, but the author's intent to cause distress is not in question in any way shape or form.
As much as it's fun to see vigilante retribution like this (and boy is it!), that does not discount the obvious legal exposure at play.
Re: Using Goatse to Stop App Theft
#257Once, out of the kindness of my foolish heart, I ran a server with a lot of great sound effects for all and sundry to download. Eventually the bandwidth was getting hammered by a huge number of leechers seemingly from some apps that had simply hard-linked to the resources. After replacing said resources [0] they soon ceased but not without a slew of abusive and entitled emails demanding I restore the SFX. Oh fun time…
Hey, this is a proper banger!
Re: Using Goatse to Stop App Theft
#258Once, out of the kindness of my foolish heart, I ran a server with a lot of great sound effects for all and sundry to download. Eventually the bandwidth was getting hammered by a huge number of leechers seemingly from some apps that had simply hard-linked to the resources. After replacing said resources [0] they soon ceased but not without a slew of abusive and entitled emails demanding I restore the SFX. Oh fun time…
"I ran a server for free sound effects for all and when it got popular I fucked over my users" lolwut.
Should've cached the responses!
Re: Using Goatse to Stop App Theft
#259Once, out of the kindness of my foolish heart, I ran a server with a lot of great sound effects for all and sundry to download. Eventually the bandwidth was getting hammered by a huge number of leechers seemingly from some apps that had simply hard-linked to the resources. After replacing said resources [0] they soon ceased but not without a slew of abusive and entitled emails demanding I restore the SFX. Oh fun time…
"I ran a server for free sound effects for all and when it got popular I fucked over my users" lolwut.
Well that's not quite what happened is it? It was never "popular". I
got my stuff abused and retaliated in a benign, schoolboy fashion for
laughs.
Though if shall own any blame it's for being naive and inexperienced in the days before we all needed rate limiting against corporate bots.
As it goes, the whole shebang got archived on Wayback/Internet Archive so all the goodies remain up there for people to enjoy and I stopped needing to run a box and deal with misuse. God bless the Internet Archive I guess.
Re: Using Goatse to Stop App Theft
#260I am absolutely not a lawyer, but I wouldn't do something like this for fear of falling afoul of anti-obscenity laws. For instance, the UK has a cyberflashing law which allots a two year custodial sentence for sending a graphic image (by any means) with intent to cause distress.
So stealing the app is OK but doing something about it is illegal? Sounds like the law all right.
Yeah, it turns out you don't have carte blanche to enact any form of vigilante justice you desire.