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Using Goatse to Stop App Theft

joshcsimmons.com

371–380 of 464 posts

Re: Using Goatse to Stop App Theft

#371
post #141

I 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.

OTOH, people accessing the game through iframes may be in breach of the computer misuse act for unauthorised access to content.

And I'm sure the British courts will rule in the author's favour when the lawsuit is filed, but that doesn't make flashing other users legal.

Then again, I doubt someone is going to file a police report, especially when the URL of the page would bring the reports to an entirely different web page in the first place.

Re: Using Goatse to Stop App Theft

#372
post #308

No comment on how instead of retaliating against the thieving website, he's retaliating against the –probably unknowing– users that just happened on those websites through Google? (Some among whom are probably children)

If I get served a goatse image, I never return to that website. The website wants users, so yes, they're retaliating against the website. But yes, won't somebody think of the children.

So every time the image is served, the website is hurt in a marginal, indirect way (-1 user, a bit less revenue stream),

while one unrelated user is hurt in a substantial way (somewhere from pretty disgusted to mildly traumatized)

Does nobody see the obvious problem?

Re: Using Goatse to Stop App Theft

#373

Rest assured that the article linked here does not include any images, goatse or otherwise.

Luckily it's not rendered in an iFrame!

This site allows anyone to inject content, you don't need an iframe.

https://joshcsimmons.com/post/eJyVlD2PgzAMhvf8Cm8HlcD76dSlf8...

Created using

    wget "https://gist.githubusercontent.com/snipe/5512408/raw/db9f4051eeb1079de436ec5ae9ba9aff2a99549c/gistfile1.txt"
    python3
    >>> base64.b64encode(zlib.compress(b"
" + open('gistfile1.txt', 'rb').read())).replace(b'/',b'%2F')

Re: Using Goatse to Stop App Theft

#374

I 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…

Devil's advocate: OPs approach is a form of inoculation against the ad-powered Internet. The experience may not be pleasant, but drives the right message and quite memorably so.

I don't have a problem with OP's approach and I think he should be free to put whatever he wants on the content-stealing sites, but he didn't have to make it sexual.

A very annoying, loud, visually busy animation would've sufficed. Baby shark at maximum volume, or a continuous fart sound, or maybe just a high pitched beep would also sufficiently scare away people.

By showing porn in a place that he knows minors and other protected groups will visit, they violate decency laws in a whole bunch of countries. They probably wouldn't if this was accidental (i.e. they sold their domain to a third party that turned it into a porn site) but in this case they admit this was very much intentional.

Re: Using Goatse to Stop App Theft

#375
post #41

Is the whole goatse.jpg b64-encoded in that URL?

No, just the blog post itself. But you could put a goatse jpg there and it would get hosted.

For example, use

    base64.b64encode(zlib.compress(b"
" + open('gistfile1.txt', 'rb').read())).replace(b'/',b'%2F')
To get gistfile1.txt shown in the page.

Re: Using Goatse to Stop App Theft

#376

What is going on with that URL? Does it encode the entire post? ...Yes, it does. What an odd decision. I'd link to the page where he explains it, but it also has a half-page URL.

URLs will be automatically abbreviated when rendered on Hacker News. The actual link destination is still intact, so you would be able to paste an URL like that without breaking the layout.

Re: Using Goatse to Stop App Theft

#377

Once, 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…

Honestly, I know that it's far too late to change now, but I think the ability of a web-page to silently request resources from other domains has proven to be a complete misfeature overall. What's it given us? Tracking cookies, spy-pixels, cross-site-scripting-attacks, hard-link-bandwidth-stealing, SSL mixed-content warnings, etc.

Yes, I know it's also given us CDNs and Single Sign-On, but there are ways to implement SSO as a more active action without that, and I'm not convinced that CDNs are worth the cost we paid.

Re: Using Goatse to Stop App Theft

#378
post #337
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the days of P2P file sharing I used to share files with file names and metadata indicating they were rare Metallica live recordings of Metallica songs and other metal band's songs.... but instead https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwK_WOXjfc0 So many downloads.

Hopefully you've since grown up a bit and discovered some hobbies that don't involve being a dick to annoy strangers?

You are stealing from musicians so I think you are the dick and you are annoying me, a stranger!

Re: Using Goatse to Stop App Theft

#379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Devil's advocate: OPs approach is a form of inoculation against the ad-powered Internet. The experience may not be pleasant, but drives the right message and quite memorably so.

I don't have a problem with OP's approach and I think he should be free to put whatever he wants on the content-stealing sites, but he didn't have to make it sexual. A very annoying, loud, visually busy animation would've sufficed. Baby shark at maximum volume, or a continuous fart sound, or maybe just a high pitched beep would also sufficiently scare away people. By showing porn in a place that he knows minors and o…

The fact that you think it is sexual says more about you than them.

Re: Using Goatse to Stop App Theft

#380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hm... https://joshcsimmons.com/post/H4sIAA6yLmUA/wVAwQnFIAxd5ZGL7c...

Awesome - and the first time I've actually had someone "post" on my site.

Watch out: virus/scam/spam sites can detect sites like yours and write tons of redirects, link them somewhere, and use your site's good reputation to get their scams on the home page. This is also a huge problem for redirect services.

If the wrong person publishes the wrong link, you can get your domain banned from Google and tons of other sites as a "security risk", which can spread to your email (if you use @joshcsimmons.com).

It's fine if you don't care about blacklists of course, but this kind of abuse can easily sneak up on you.

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